United Arab Emirates businesses kept up pressure on the central bank to sever the dirham's peg to the weakened US dollar or at least revalue the currency, according to executives' remarks published in a newspaper.
"The dirham must be de-pegged immediately," Khalaf al-Habtoor, chairman of conglomerate Al-Habtoor Group, is quoted as saying in Emirates Business, a daily owned by the ruler of Dubai who is also prime minister and vice president of the UAE. "The implications of the dollar peg have really begun to affect business and markets," he said. UAE Central Bank Governor Sultan Nasser al-Suweidi said last month he was under growing pressure from "companies and communities" to drop the peg and track a currency basket including the euro to contain inflation.
Suweidi backtracked after Gulf Arab rulers agreed at a summit last week to keep their dollar pegs. He said last week he saw no reason to change currency policy "for the foreseeable future".