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Alam
part eccentric ... part fun .... stubborn .. but not stuck up ... very open to different views, ideas and possibilities ... varied interests ... engineer ... mba ... trying-to-be-a-good-entrepreneur ... ex-software ... ex-quality ... ex-tobacco ... ex-alcohol ... trying-to-be-ex-cancer
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Tuesday, November 27, 2007

A Rupee for petroleum

Lately the financial newspapers and blogs have started carrying loads of hu ha about petroleum and currencies ... should crude be traded in Euros ? ... should it be priced in Dollars ? ... does it really matter? ... who keeps his forex reserves where? ... who's weaving a basket for his currency? ... the issues are every where ... so I have come up with this novel suggestion

It would be good fun if, instead of running after dollar, pound, yer and euros, the persian gulf countries moved on to the Indian Rupee ... moving to the rupee wouldn't be such a strange thing for the sheiks ... they are already familiar with it ... in the olden times the Indian Rupee was in wide circulation in the gulf ... things went to such an extent that RBI had to issue special notes, popularly called gulf rupee, for the region ...

The gulf rupee was similar to the indian rupee except the fact that it was in different colours and the serial numbers included an extra "Z". Here's how the 1, 5,10 and 100 gulf rupee notes looked like (pics taken from Qatar Central Bank site)



5 comments:

Nothing Spectacular said...

Amazing!! Ye sach hai ya fatta?? Agar RBI ne aisa kiya, to kyun kiya??

Alam said...

haan haan jitna mujhey pata hai ye such hai....

RBI ko naye note isliye issue karney padey kyonki loge sona smuggle kar ke ussey banaye hue paisey ko bahar ke banks ke thru white kar rahey they...

This is how it is supposed to work...
RBI had maintained pound reserves to cover the currency that was abroad (it seems the foreign banks bought indian currency by paying in pounds.. rupee was pegged to a fixed rate against pound).

Gold was not freely importable ... so its price was higher in India ... smugglers brought gold illegally into India and took payment in Indian currency ... they then smuggled the currency out and redeemed it against pounds in Kuwait or some place..... The central bank of Kuwait claimed pounds for the rupee from RBI ...

Thus RBI began loosing its pound reserve (for currency circulating in mid-east) to gold mafia's money laundering.

They solved the problem by issuing separate currency note for the gulf

Nothing Spectacular said...

fascinating stuff...tells you of the danger of a fixed exchange rate..

the irony is that in today's world, india would be much better off fixing its exchange rate to the dollar (like china has)

how times change!!

Bland Spice said...

oye you're active again...

this is amazing stuff - kahaan padhaa?

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