The Bahrain Monetary Agency (BMA - central bank) on 29 December announced that it will offer bonds worth $250 million in January. The Ijara Sukuk bonds will have a tenor of six years, starting on 3 February. Commercial banks, insurance companies and Islamic finance houses will be eligible to subscribe. The first such paper, issued in September 2001, was worth $100 million and was fully subscribed (MEED 7:9:01). 'This is the largest Islamically-structured primary bond issue to be made by the government of Bahrain, and the second largest ever made by the kingdom,' Waleed Abdulla Rashdan, BMA executive director for banking operations, said in a statement. The agency has stated its intention to issue a total of $670 million in Islamic bonds in 2003 in an attempt to develop the market for these instruments.