BEIRUT: Lebanon plans to keep its gold reserves at around $17 billion as it tries to protect its economy from domestic unrest in neighboring countries by maintaining interest rates at current levels and adopting a prudent fiscal approach, Lebanon’s Central Bank said Thursday.

Speaking in Doha, Central Bank governor Riad Salameh also said Lebanon had no plans to revalue its currency against the U.S. dollar.

Salameh was speaking on the sidelines of an Arab central bank governors’ meeting in the Qatar capital.

“Lebanon is immune to what is happening in Syria or worldwide because of the model we have, which is highly liquid, prudent approach to credit and low leverage,” Salameh said, adding that there was demand for the Lebanese currency and cash inflows were improving.

Salameh said that high oil prices should help protect the Middle East from a worsening global economy, as fears linger over the health of the U.S. and Europe’s inability to solve its snowballing sovereign debt crisis.

“We don’t see a negative effect on the Arab World [from the U.S. and Europe] because oil prices are still high and that is the main source of wealth in the region,” he said.

Salameh also predicted that Inflation in Lebanon would be about 6 percent this year.

But the news wasn’t all optimistic as Salameh expected economic growth to regress in 2011 due to the political instability in the country over the last six months.

“What has affected the economic growth is that Lebanon was unable to achieve any economic growth in the first six months of 2011 due to the absence of a fully functioning government and the general political situation [in the country],” Salameh told Reuters.

But Salameh added that economic growth in the country has been on a satisfactory trajectory since July and that the economic slowdown in the country was an exception given local and regional security developments. With Reuters.