The company is submitting required documents in order to obtain approval for the issue, Salmi told Reuters. He did not give details of the planned issue.

Until the Oman government's recent debut issue of sukuk, "we lacked having a yield curve and a benchmark for sukuk in the market. And (now) we do, so we expect more sukuk to be issued," he said.

Salmi also said he expected at least eight initial public offers of shares in Oman in the coming two years, as eight insurance companies would have to go public. He did not elaborate. (Reporting by Fatma Alarimi; Editing by Andrew Torchia)