The United Arab Emirates is not discussing whether to rejoin the planned Gulf monetary union at this point, the Gulf country’s central bank governor Sultan Nasser Al-Suweidi said on Monday.
The second largest Arab economy pulled out of the project in May 2009, three years after Oman did the same, in protest at a decision to site the joint central bank in Saudi Arabia.
‘Well, this is an issue, which is not being discussed yet at this point,’ he told Reuters on the sidelines of an event.
Only Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain are now pushing ahead with the union.
Kuwait, which runs the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council this year, made bringing the UAE and Oman back a priority of its presidency. Oman has said it did not plan to come back at any time in the future.
Muhammad Al-Jasser, Governor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (Sama) told reporters on Sunday he had not lost hope of Oman and the UAE returning to the fold.
Gulf central bank governors will hold the first meeting of their joint monetary council on March 30, the next step towards monetary union, the head of the Gulf Cooperation Council said on Feb 9.
The governors of the four Gulf states planning monetary union will discuss legal and administrative issues in order ‘to speed up the single currency,’ Abdulrahman Al-Attiyah, the bloc’s secretary general said.
