Commodity currencies good for FX reserve pool

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Countries seeking to diversify the pool of assets in their foreign exchange reserve portfolio should consider including commodity currencies to the mix, Barclays' chief currency strategist, Steven Englander, said on Tuesday.

Commodity currencies including the Australian, Canadian and New Zealand dollars, whose values are strongly linked to the export of certain raw materials, offer protection against commodity price shocks and also do not face the risk of falling interest rates, Englander said.

Englander, speaking at the Reuters Investment Outlook Summit in New York, called the currencies "increasingly attractive for reserve managers."

The future of the U.S. dollar as the world's main reserve currency has been increasingly questioned as the United States issues trillions of dollars to help finance stimulus packages and bailouts.

Emerging market heavyweights Brazil, Russia, India and China, also known as the BRIC group, meeting in Russia on Tuesday called for a "diversified, stable and predictable currency system."

Still, they did not explicitly mention the U.S. dollar or an alternative supranational reserve currency.

"G-10 commodity currencies are the ones that are really getting the closest attention," Englander said. "Theirs is a recovery story, a valuation story. Central banks in those countries are done cutting interest rates and quantitative easing is out of the door."

(Additional reporting by Wanfeng Zhou; Editing by Leslie Adler)