March 29, 2007	Thursday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 9, 1428

KUWAIT/DUBAI, March 28: Kuwait's central bank said on Wednesday that it may take unspecified measures to curb speculation in its dinar, firing a warning shot as speculators buy the currency in the hope that the oil producer may revalue.

“Having huge inflows of capital is increasing the burden on us,” Nabeel al-Mannae, deputy governor of the Kuwait central bank, said in a telephone interview with Reuters on Wednesday.

“We will make sure they won't make money on our currency.” Investors had been buying dinar forwards after Kuwaiti officials said they may revalue the unit, which, like other Gulf Arab currencies, is pegged to the dollar.

The central bank may “take necessary measures so that there will be no benefit from such speculative behaviour”, Mannae said in the earlier statement.

The bank is “unsatisfied with the increase in the volume of dinar purchases that do not have underlying commercial foundation and which are indicative of accumulation of speculative long dinar position”, Mannae said in the statement.

In the interview, Mannae declined to be more specific about the possible measures, though he ruled out capital controls. “We say absolutely we will not use capital controls,” he said.

The central bank could act as early as Sunday, he said. The central bank is closed on Thursday and Friday for the weekend, and again on Saturday for a public holiday.

Kuwait allowed its currency to appreciate one per cent within a 3.5 per cent trading band against the dollar in May, citing rising euro and other non-dollar import costs.

The euro has appreciated almost 13 per cent against the dollar since Jan. 1, 2006, helping to fuel inflation in Gulf Arab oil producers. Crude oil is priced in dollars.

HSBC estimated Kuwait's 2006 inflation at 3 per cent, its second highest annual rate in at least the past five years.

The dinar fell on Wednesday to as low as 0.28970 per dollar on the central bank statement, its lowest since May.

“It's pretty clear cut -- there have been rumours of a dinar revaluation and a number of people have been placing trades in forward markets based on this so the central bank is reacting to that,” said Shahin Vallee, a strategist at BNP Paribas in London. “They could sell dinar forwards aggressively.” Kuwait was the top candidate to revalue, according to several analysts in a Reuters poll earlier this month, with a change likely to be 5 per cent.

Investors betting that Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, would revalue separately from their Gulf peers pushed the UAE dirham to an 11-month high and the dinar to a 10-week high in February.

Dorothee Gasser, an economist at ING Bank in London, said US funds were among buyers of the dinar. “You can't blame the funds as Kuwait had mulled revaluation in December and they did revalue in May last year,” Gasser said.—Reuters