[Arab News.com] Yemen is the latest country to announce that it may raise much-needed financing from the financial markets through a debut sovereign sukuk issuance sometime
in the first half of 2011, up to $500 million, in selected IDB member countries. Yemen is one of the poorest member countries of the IDB. The IMF and the World Bank are assisting Yemen on the technical aspects of issuing commercial paper under a technical agreement which the World Bank Group has with the IDB Group to assist its member countries to help formulate policies to raise financing for infrastructure, development and budgetary support. Yemen is 1planning a sukuk issuance structured on the Sihama Musharaka sukuk in Sudan. The Bank of Sudan and the Islamic banks there are helping Yemen
in this respect. The sukuk issuance is aimed to help the government diversify its sources of budgetary financing, attract inward investment to help fund infrastructure and other projects, provide an investment outlet for local Islamic banks and conventional banks for liquidity management purposes, provide an investment outlet for local
Islamic banks to park their capital and statutory reserves (a mechanism which is currently absent in the Yemeni market), and help further promote the Islamic banking sector in the Arabian Gulf country. |
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