Dubai-based Amlak Finance and Tamweel will resume mortgage lending within weeks as separate entities before moving ahead with a likely merger, Dubai's finance chief has said.

Amlak Finance is the largest publicly held Islamic finance company in the UAE, while Tamweel is a property financier offering a range of Sharia-compliant products.

The fate of a merger of the two Islamic home finance companies has been under review by a government committee this year since the UAE announced in November it would merge the entities and halted trading in their shares.

'As far as I know, their intention is to reactivate the two companies and then work on the merger,' said Nasser al-Shaikh, director-general of Dubai's Department of Finance was quoted as saying to Emirates Business.

'The road is paved to the merger and we have a common agreement between the two boards and the two management teams, and at the end it will be the shareholders' decision.'

Shaikh added the two firms could resume lending 'within weeks' and that a ministerial committee was discussing the possibility of extending or restructuring the firms' debt obligations. – Reuters