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Doha: Gulf officials are set to announce a final decision on the long anticipated unified currency in the run up to the meeting of the GCC leaders.
The finance ministers of the six GCC states will meet on Sunday in Doha to finalise “the economic agenda” of the 28th summit, to be held in Doha on Monday and Tuesday, a GCC official said.
They are expected to declare the group’s plan to go ahead with the original deadline of 2010 to issue a unified GCC currency or to defer the issue to the widely expected 2015 new timeframe.
The new deadline seems more likely since Oman announced earlier this year that it was unable to meet the 2010 deadline.
The ministers are also expected to discuss the fallouts of the American dollar’s decline which hurt the economies of the GCC states, which peg their currencies to the United States green note.
Kuwait has already delinked its dinar from the falling dollar putting pressure on other Gulf states to either follow suit or revalue their currencies which is more likely, according to analysts.
The annual summit is being held in the shadow of the continuous decline of the US currency and the increasing tension between neighbouring Iran and the US. The two issues are expected to dominate the meeting, which will be also attended by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a guest for the first time.
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