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Kuwait clears Gulf currency, says will take long
KUWAIT - The Kuwaiti parliament unanimously approved a measure to join plans for a Gulf monetary union on Tuesday, but a top government official said adoption of the single currency could take up to 10 years.
Lawmakers, however, demanded that another vote take place ahead of the single currency launch.
Kuwait is the latest member of the four-country bloc with in the Gulf Cooperation Council to clear the long-standing project after Saudi Arabia.
"Issuing the (Gulf) currency, as the central bank governor clarified, will take a long time and could reach up to 10 years," Kuwait Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammad al-Salem al-Sabah told parliament.
Kuwaiti deputies delayed the vote last month, saying they needed more time to assess economic implications of the union.
Bahrain was on track to ratify the project ahead of the Gulf rulers' meeting in Kuwait on Dec 14-16.
Abdulrahman al-Attiyah, the GCC secretary general, has said that Qatar had already ratified the union plan although Qatari officials have declined to comment.
The United Arab Emirates and Oman, another members of the six-strong GCC -- a loose economic bloc -- have opted out of monetary union.
The issue of how to peg any Gulf single currency has gained momentum over the past months as the dollar slid to multi-month lows and oil prices recovered
Kuwait, the world's fourth largest oil exporter, is the only Gulf Arab country to peg its currency to a basket rather than the dollar and has promoted this idea last month. [
Saudi Arabia, the top Arab economy, followed saying a basket was one of the options, putting the greenback's regional status in question as countries have long said the single currency is expected to be linked to the dollar.
Qatar's central banker told Reuters last week the country's riyal currency will stay pegged to the dollar for the time being, but all possibilities will be considered for the planned Gulf monetary union.
The dollar peg is a sensitive issue in the region, where top two economies -- Saudi Arabia and UAE -- have strong political and economic ties to the United States.
The Gulf Arab countries have adopted fixed exchange rate regimes in the past to stabilise their currencies and import low inflation from the overseas.
Kuwait broke ranks with fellow Gulf states in 2007 and dropped the peg to help fight then-soaring inflation.
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