days deliberation here today. The workshop is organized by the Riyadh-based GCC's General Secretariat in cooperation with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The workshop, held under the auspices of Al-Bilad Bank, is attended by delegates of monetary bodies, central banks and Ministries of Finance in the GCC countries. At the outset of the workshop, GCC Assistant Secretary General for Economic Affairs Mohammad bin Obaid Al-Mazrou'e dilevered a speech in which he welcomed the participants pointing out that the workshop aims at finding a unified approach to apply the fiscal and currency statistics booklet of the IMF. He thanked the IMF for its cooperation and support to hold this workshop. Al-Mazrou'e said that establishing GCC Monetary Fund and issuing GCC unified currency in 2010 must be supported by an intensive program of statistical coordination, pointing out that it requires joint approaches in processing and publishing data related to the criteria of economic performance proximity, which is necessary for the success of GCC Monetary Fund. Al-Mazrou'e also said that correct currency policies must be based on correct statistics data and expressed optimism that the workshop plays a beneficial role to assist national statistics bodies to apply international criteria, facilitate necessary coordination among the various statistics collection bodies in fields of agreement of concepts and classifications and adopt a joint approach in statistical works to make these figures comparable. The workshop will discuss the principles of statistics, the GCC currency value, features and classification of financial mechanisms, stocks and accounting rules, central banking and companies' budgets, and international and foreign reserves. The GCC is made up of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman.
