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Rogers sees yuan becoming reserve currency

"If there's a currency that has the potential to replace the dollar, the only one I can see on the horizon is the renminbi."

Jim Rodgers, investor

Jim Rogers, who joined George Soros to start the Quantum hedge fund in the 1970s, said the Chinese yuan may overtake the US dollar as the most accepted currency among the world's central banks.

The yuan may surge in years ahead and the US dollar will fall, Rogers said.

"If there's a currency that has the potential to replace the dollar, the only one I can see on the horizon is the renminbi," Rogers, 63, said in an interview in Singapore on Monday. "The renminbi's going to go much, much higher," he said, declining to give a forecast.

It may take decades for China to achieve reserve status for a currency that it doesn't yet allow to be held outside of the country. The US dollar made up 66 percent of world official foreign currency holdings in 2004, according to the IMF. China ended its decade-old US dollar peg last July.

The yuan closed at 8.0127 against the dollar as of 3:30pm in Shanghai yesterday from 8.0137 on Wednesday. The Chinese currency on Wednesday had its biggest gain against the US dollar since last July's revaluation.

Exchange-based trading in the yuan ends at 3:30pm, while direct dealing between banks continues for two hours. The yuan closed at 8.0115 at 5:30pm, according to the Web site of the China Foreign Exchange Trade System in Shanghai.

Rogers wrote about his travels across China and the rest of the world in the books Investment Biker and Adventure Capitalist.

The New York-based investor said he's on the road again -- to Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan -- to help UBS AG market commodities in Asia.

"The US dollar is in the process of losing its status as the world's reserve currency," Rogers said. "The US dollar's going to go down a lot in the next decade or so."
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