Economist calls for Gulf single currency

Former chief economist of the Dubai International Financial Center Authority, Nasser Saidi, said here on Monday that the six Gulf Arab states should realize plans for a single currency despite the crisis of the Euro as a multi-national currency. In an interview with the Dubai-based weekly Arabian Business, Saidi said the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), whose member states are Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, was much more stable than the debt-laden 17-member Eurozone. "The GCC countries don't have the big macro-economic differences that the European countries have," said Saidi who serves now as an independent economist. A plan to implement a common GCC currency had been under review for the last ten years but was postponed several times. Currently no exact target date has been set by the GCC, which is home of around 60 percent of the world's proven oil reserves. Saidi, also a former minister of economy of Lebanon, added that the GCC states' low levels of debt, low budget deficits, large pools of international reserves and abundant natural resources also meant the common currency would make sense. According to the Institute of International Finance (IIF), the Washington-based global banking association, the external account surplus of the GCC is likely to decline from a peak of 389 billion U.S. dollars in 2012 to 334 billion dollars in 2013, but still leading to an ample amount of foreign assets which the IIF estimated to rise to 2.5 trillion dollars by year-end.