Islamic banking liquidity issues reviewed

KARACHI: Meezan Bank’s Shariah Supervisory Board reviewed major issues and challenges to Islamic banking industry with the focus on the critical challenges to liquidity management, a statement said on Monday.

The board carefully reviewed and discussed various solutions for addressing the excess liquidity situation of Islamic banks and provided guidelines regarding different proposals presented by the management of the Meezan Bank, it added.

It also approved a Bai Muajjal Sukuk transaction for the bank to provide Shariah-compliant financing to the government of Pakistan.

With the lack of Shariah-compliant liquidity management instruments or equivalent government securities and money market instruments, Islamic banking operations in the country face a liquidity problem, which places them at a competitive disadvantage with respect to their conventional counterparts, it said.

Chaired by former justice Muhammad Taqi Usmani, the meeting was also attended by the bank’s Founding President and CEO Irfan Siddiqui, senior officers of the bank and Al-Meezan Investment Management Limited.

The board members noted that assets worth over Rs100 billion, being managed under 24 different funds / plans, Meezan Bank’s subsidiary, Al-Meezan Investment Management Limited (AMIM), has outpaced almost all players of the mutual funds industry in terms of growth in assets under the management. .