Middle East > Bahrain > Bahrain’s Al Baraka Islamic Bank Gets Approval to Operate in Morocco

Bahrain: Bahrain’s Al Baraka Islamic Bank Gets Approval to Operate in Morocco

2016/05/12

The Bahrain based leading Islamic banking group, Al Baraka Banking Group, will establish a banking unit in Morocco very any minute at this time, the Islamic lender said in a statement, according to Reuters.

Next receiving approval from Morocco’s central bank, Al Baraka Banking Group will invest in the Moroccan Islamic banking sector by launching a new business any minute at this time.

The bank, which has operations across the Middle East, Asia and Africa, said that investing in the Morocco market “would significantly help diversify assets and gain sources for the group.”

“We are working presently to complete the establishment procedures, and we hope to launch it any minute at this time,” the bank was quoted by Reuters as saying.

In the beginning of the negotiations with the Moroccan authorities in 2015, CEO Adnan Ahmed Yousif told TR Zawya that “The new bank will be equally owned by Al Baraka and Banque Marcaine du Commerce Extérieur (BMCE), and will start operations in the initial quarter of 2016.”

The CEO before said that the bank planned to open twenty branches all over the kingdom in the initial five years of operating in Morocco.

“Morocco was one of the last markets to approve Islamic banking, and the Moroccan market is large, promising and organized in terms of legislation, the legal and banking system,” Yousif said.

According to the Bank’s official website, the Group – which received the “Best Islamic Financial Institution” Award – has a wide geographical presence in the form of subsidiary banking units and representative offices in fifteen nations, which in turn provide their services through over 600 branches.

Al Baraka currently has a strong presence in Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Sudan, Bahrain, Pakistan, South Africa, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, inclunding two representative offices in Indonesia and Libya.

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