Designing Operational Models of Ijarah Sukuk for Conducting Open Market Operations (OMO) in the Iranian Monetary System

Reviewing the theoretical models of Ijarah Sukuk, which are Shariah-compliant and economically practical, this paper designs the “Ijarah Muntahia Bittamleek Sukuk for the sake of liquidity management” as a model that can be used in the context of Islamic finance to conduct Open Market Operations (OMO) in the Iranian Banking System. The model is presented in the form of the following three operational models: 1. Issuing central bank Ijarah Sukuk based on the government capital assets and using the gathered funds to repay the government debts to the central bank. 2. Issuing governmental Ijarah Sukuk based on the government capital assets and using the gathered funds to repay the government debts to the central bank. 3. Issuing central bank Ijarah Sukuk based on the central bank capital assets. In each case, besides explicating the model and the optimal method for its being applied, the developments in the monetary base are analyzed. The results of the study, which are derived based on an analytical-descriptive approach, show that the main prerequisite for supporting production of goods and services in the Iranian economy is to conduct the monetary policies in a suitable way to control inflation. For doing this, it is inevitable for the central bank to have proper and Shariah-compliant financial instruments. It seems that the operational models of Ijarah Sukuk presented in this research, have enough capacity to be used for Open Market Operations (OMO). Hence, considering the jurisprudential and economicpoint of view, these models can be considered as a substitute or complement for the current Iranian central bank Musharakah Sukuk.