The International Monetary Fund said it’s considering classifying the Australian and the Canadian dollars as reserve currencies.
The two “are to be considered for inclusion” separately in the IMF’s “Currency Composition of Official Foreign-Exchange Reserves” data, the Washington-based lender said in a report published on Nov. 14. They’ve previously been included in an “other currencies” category in the COFER reports.
The IMF plan comes as Australia and Canada have shown more signs of stability in the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis than the world’s biggest developed economies. While the U.S., to the U.K. to Japan have been coping with increasing debt loads, deficits in Canada and Australia are forecast to be below 5 percent of gross domestic product in 2012 and are expected to shrink.
“It really helps to cement the stability of these currencies,” Ravi Bharadwaj, a market analyst in Washington at Western Union Business Solutions, a unit of Western Union Co. (WU), said in a telephone interview. “The Australian and Canadian economies have been much more stable than the top economies in the post-financial-crisis era.”
The Australian budget is forecast to show a surplus that is 0.1 percent relative to GDP next year, after a 3 percent deficit in 2012, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Canada’s may shrink to a 0.6 percent deficit from 1.2 percent. The U.S. shortfall relative to GDP is forecast to contract to 5.7 percent from 7 percent.
Source:http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-19/imf-may-classify-aussie-canadian-dollars-as-reserve-currencies.html
The two “are to be considered for inclusion” separately in the IMF’s “Currency Composition of Official Foreign-Exchange Reserves” data, the Washington-based lender said in a report published on Nov. 14. They’ve previously been included in an “other currencies” category in the COFER reports.
The IMF plan comes as Australia and Canada have shown more signs of stability in the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis than the world’s biggest developed economies. While the U.S., to the U.K. to Japan have been coping with increasing debt loads, deficits in Canada and Australia are forecast to be below 5 percent of gross domestic product in 2012 and are expected to shrink.
“It really helps to cement the stability of these currencies,” Ravi Bharadwaj, a market analyst in Washington at Western Union Business Solutions, a unit of Western Union Co. (WU), said in a telephone interview. “The Australian and Canadian economies have been much more stable than the top economies in the post-financial-crisis era.”
The Australian budget is forecast to show a surplus that is 0.1 percent relative to GDP next year, after a 3 percent deficit in 2012, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Canada’s may shrink to a 0.6 percent deficit from 1.2 percent. The U.S. shortfall relative to GDP is forecast to contract to 5.7 percent from 7 percent.
Source:http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-19/imf-may-classify-aussie-canadian-dollars-as-reserve-currencies.html
