UAE rejects Gulf currency

http://www.gulfnews.com/business/Banking_and_Finance/10315315.html


This story - if true - is a bombshell. It is one thing for Oman to play the UK of the GCC and announce as it did a couple of years back that it will opt out of the Gulf common currency, but for the UAE to follow up the recent announcement that the GCC monetary authority will be in Riyadh with an announcement that it will not be a part of the common currency, now that is something else. Abu Dhabi had signalled it wanted to be the location, while influential voices in Dubai have been singing the praises of the putative "Khaleeji" currency of late.

Is the unnamed official source putting in an early bid for strong UAE representation among the eventual central bank board members, or just emphasising that, in such an unintergrated economy, the common currency is not that important when most trade and investment is with the west and Asia? It might be that the UAE genuinely wants maximum national financial flexibility, especially in uncertain economic times, but then Abu Dhabi and Dubai's long standing caution, even, historically speaking, outright opposition, toward Saudi Arabia has not gone away, just as periodically Abu Dhabi's unhappiness over their (oil-related) border delimitations gets a hearing. (Partly related to this, the announcements this year that Saudi and Qatar have "finalized" their border rang rather hollow to me at least, given that without Abu Dhabi's full and unreserved agreement, this isn't possible, quite apart from the issue of who has seen the Saudi-Qatari "final" map)...Any thoughts on what is going on ?