The United Arab Emirates' central bank has approved amendments to liquidity rules for the OPEC member's banks, in a statement said Wednesday. “The central bank board reviewed a proposed liquidity regulation for banks operating in the UAE and instructed introduction of some amendments to it,” it said. Central bank Gov. Sultan Nasser Al-Suweidi said in November that the UAE did not need to introduce any new liquidity or provisioning measures due to the euro zone's severe sovereign debt crisis. The exposure of UAE banks to sovereign and private sector debt in Europe is small and their capital adequacy ratio was around 11 percent, he said in October. UAE economy shrank 1.6 percent on the back of global financial turmoil in 2009, its worst since 1988, as oil prices plunged and a local property bubble burst, straining banks in one of the world's top five crude exporters. Bank lending has remained in low single digits since then. Analysts expected the $297 billion economy to expand by 3.8 percent this year and next after a 1.4 percent growth in 2010, helped by robust oil prices and increased government spending.
