KARACHI, Sept 9: A UAE-based group, Emirates Investments, has received a licence from the State Bank to open Emirates Global Islamic Bank in Pakistan. SBP Governor Dr Ishrat Husain handed over the licence to group’s managing director Reza Jaffar at a ceremony held at the central bank here on Thursday, SBP’s chief spokesman Syed Wasimuddin told Dawn.

He said that the bank would have a paid-up capital of Rs2 billion.

With the granting of a licence for this new Islamic bank, the number of Islamic banks has risen to four. Two of them — Meezan Bank and Al-Baraka Islamic Bank -– are already in operation, whereas Bank Islami Pakistan, the third bank with a licence to operate a full-fledged Islamic bank, is yet to start operations.

Mr Wasimuddin said that Meezan Bank and Al-Baraka Islamic Bank had a combined network of 36 branches, 27 and nine, respectively, adding that these were in addition to 30 Islamic banking branches being operated by nine commercial banks.

The sponsor shareholders of the proposed Emirates Global Islamic Bank plan to raise 50 per cent of the required paid-up capital of Rs2 billion through an initial public offering, a press release issued on Thursday said. It added that the new Islamic bank would have Syed Tariq Husain as its CEO.