| Kippreport.com

Talking money

December 13, 2009 1:54 by Aarti Nagraj

US-based Pacific Investment Management (Pimco), which manages $940.4 billion in assets as of September, said last week that it is planning to buy debts of government-owned in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

“We’re coming and buying,” Michael Gomez, co-head of emerging markets at the fund manager, told Bloomberg. “In any sell-off, we’ll be accumulating even more. We think they’re cheap,” he said.

“Those who were spooked by Dubai are giving a nice profit to anybody who knows the region and understands that Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait are much stronger credits,” Roy Maurer, managing-director of Qatar’s QNB Capital told the Telegraph.  ”Funds are building up positions significantly,” he added.

But it’s not just the Dubai debacle that will be discussed at the summit; the Gulf monetary union, which was approved during the summit last year, will take center stage this year once again. The project, which has been postponed since 2001, received a further blow this year, after the UAE announced that it would opt out of the GCC single currency plan. Officials in the country were angry about the decision to have the regional central bank in Riyadh.

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Tags: currency, Dubai debt, GCC summit, Gulf countries, Kuwait, monetary union, Qatar, Saudi, UAE