Publication Details
Abstract
This study develops a methodological framework for assessing the efficiency of Islamic banking services in Uzbekistan and provides a pilot econometric application using harmonised financial indicators from selected foreign full-fledged Islamic banks. The framework combines profitability, asset quality, capital adequacy, liquidity, operational efficiency, and bank size as conceptually relevant dimensions. Because a sufficiently long Islamic-banking panel for Uzbekistan is not yet available, the empirical component is deliberately limited to a pilot sample for which return on assets (ROA), a comparable asset-quality ratio (AQ), and the cost-to-income ratio (CIR) could be harmonised. Descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, variance inflation factors, and an OLS specification with HC1 heteroskedasticity-robust standard errors are employed. In the 13-observation pilot sample, AQ and CIR are negatively associated with ROA; however, the small sample and cross-country institutional differences preclude causal or generalisable inference. The study therefore treats the estimates as a feasibility test rather than as a forecast for Uzbekistan. Its main contribution is a transparent monitoring architecture that can be re-estimated with fixed-effects, random-effects, and dynamic panel methods once standardised bank-level Islamic-finance data become available in Uzbekistan.