A promise of wealth

Oussama Kaissi is the chief executive officer of the Islamic Corporation for the Insurance of Investment and Export Credit (ICEIC), the insurance arm of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB). The IDB is a Saudi Arabia-based multilateral organization which comprises a group of Islamic institutions in the realm of finance. Executive sat down with Kaissi to discuss the role of Islamic banking in Lebanon and the potential of issuing Islamic debt instruments (known as sukuk) for the country. E   If we talk about the state of the Islamic finance industry in Lebanon, Islamic banks do not seem to have developed strongly here in the past when compared with the conventional finance offers, which local corporate customers have responded to. How do you see this? There are two Islamic banks here in Beirut. One of them is an offshoot of [GCC-based] Baraka Group, and the other is an Islamic entity of