Forex News

Saudi Arabia’s Finance Minister Ibrahim Al-Assaf agreed with the U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson that the riyal’s peg to dollar is serving good to the country’s economy and assured him that Saudi Arabia has no plans to unlink the currency.

Kuwaiti Finance Minister has said that the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, U.A.E., Qatar and Bahrain specifically, are planning to scrap their currencies’ peg to dollar soon.

The United Arab Emirates government has established a new committee, which purpose is to study the possibility of scrapping the dirham’s peg to the U.S. dollar and the reasons to maintain this peg.

GCC states — Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia — decided to cut their deposit rates from 3.50% to 3.00% today, following the yesterday’s interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve.

The government of Dubai, U.A.E. largest emirate, is against the currency revaluation and is pro dirham’s peg to the U.S. dollar, according to Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, the member of the Dubai’s Board of Executive Council.

Hamud Bin Sangur al-Zadjali, the Central Bank of Oman Governor, spoke during European Banking Congress in Frankfurt today, speaking that Oman has no plans to end its peg to U.S. dollar.

United Arab Emirates and Qatar may drop their currencies’ pegs to dollar without waiting for their GCC partners, Omar Bin Sulaiman the governor of the Dubai International Financial Centre said. Increased pressure from that falling dollar, wounded by the mortgage crisis in U.S., inflicts vulnerability on these Middle Eastern oil exporting countries.

OPEC summit, which is to be held this weekend, could become a field of discussion of possible dollar abandonment as the official OPEC’s oil currency. Iran and Venezuela, concerned with the dollars continuous fall against other world currencies, are interested in changing oil pricing to other major currencies.

Sultan bin Nasser al-Suwaidi, Central Bank Governor, said in Gwacheon, South Korea, today that U.A.E. will end the dirham’s peg to the U.S. dollar, if it will continue further to depreciate against euro. U.A.E. dirham’s peg to the dollar is almost 30 years old; it started in 1978 and will be probably stopped this or next year.