June 10 (Bloomberg) -- Gulf Arab states may have a single Shariah board for the region's Islamic financial institutions by 2013 to standardize the industry and increase services available to Muslims, a Shariah scholar said.

A region-wide Shariah council is 'not a far-fetched reality' since there is a pool of experts in the United Arab Emirates, said Hussain Hamed Hassan, head of Dubai Islamic Bank pJSC's Shariah committee and chairman of the Shariah Coordination Committee of the Islamic Financial Institutions in the U.A.E. 'It will happen, but it's a question of time.

Regulators around the world, including Bahrain and Malaysia, are looking for ways to better evaluate risks of the Islamic banking industry and make products suitable for investors globally. Malaysia's central bank is preparing a system that would enable cross-border transactions among Islamic financial institutions, Governor Zeti Akhtar Aziz said in May.

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