Dubai After flirting with bankruptcy, having its financial institutions almost go broke and putting its former prime minister on trial for negligence in handling Reykjavik's coffers, now Iceland is looking for a new currency.
Senior business leaders on the island nation have suggested ditching the krona — and they are shopping around for a new currency to use.
"We are looking at the Norwegian krona and the Canadian dollar," a spokesman for the Iceland Chamber of Commerce told Gulf News yesterday. "We have polled our 300 member companies on this topic for the past three years and there is a feeling that it's time to move from the [Icelandic] krona.
And with the euro in turmoil, and the US dollar hampered by Washington's huge federal deficit, Icelanders are looking at switching to the Canadian dollar.
Canada's central bank — The Bank of Canada — isn't commenting on the suggestion, nor are foreign affairs officials in Ottawa.
Iceland had previously applied to join the 27-bloc European Union but the vast majority of Icelanders are opposed to the move. And now the Eurozone debt crisis isn't appealing to the islanders after their nation barely remained solvent in the fallout from the credit crunch.
If the talk becomes reality, Iceland will join a select group of nations using others' currencies. These include Kosovo which used the euro, the Cook Islands which use the New Zealand dollar, and East Timor and Ecuador which both use the US dollar.
