United front is a currency of ideas

The most important part of being a union is possibly the simplest - presenting a unified front. But, following the departure of Oman, member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council's Monetary Union are increasingly voicing concerns about the 2010 deadline for a single currency.

It isn't the concerns that are the problem - many are legitimate - but that the individual nations are choosing to nitpick away at the official plans, rather than making a unified statement and standing by it.

According to the UAE Central Bank Governor Sultan Nasser Al Suwaidi: "The whole monetary union is now being looked at." Earlier this month, Saudi Arabia's central bank governor called the 2010 deadline "optimistic". Where is the comment from the GCC Monetary Union as a whole? According to the final communiqué from the recent GCC summit, regional leaders agreed to finalise the customs union and meet the requirements of a common market by the end of 2007.

However, convergence targets were not approved and no decision was reached on the need for, or location of, a GCC central bank. Even a decision to postpone plans could present a better show of unity in the Arabian Gulf than the relative silence from the union coupled with increasingly negative comments from separate nations.