The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been added to a list of countries most at risk of suffering a sovereign debt crisis this year, a local business journal said Thursday.

The Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc (RBS) has issued a report to "try and predict sovereign debt crises" and look at areas such as a country's liquidity, solvency, GDP growth, inflation and exchange rate volatility, Arabian Business said.

"The inclusion of some credits in the Middle East (Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE) as potentially at risk does perhaps come as something of a surprise, albeit perhaps less so after recent developments in Dubai," Timothy Ash, head of Europe, Middle East and Africa research at the RBS, was quoted as saying in the report.

Some of the new countries added to the "crisis prone" list for 2010 include Bahrain, Iceland, Lebanon and the UAE.

The report said the UAE's situation is more complex as Dubai still remains "vulnerable," but it added that "the UAE central bank, with the support of Abu Dhabi, still has ample resources to back the UAE dirham exchange rate regime."

However, Ash pointed out that "recent large scale external borrowing by quasi-sovereign entities" was the reason for the Gulfnation being added to the list of countries that may potentially face debt problems this year.

In November, Dubai, a member of the oil-rich federation UAE, jittered world markets and media after announcing that it would ask the state-owned conglomerate Dubai World's creditors to agree to a debt moratorium of at least six months as a first step towards restructuring.

The RBS, the largest British government-controlled bank, has arranged US$2.3 billion, or 17 percent, of Dubai World loans since January 2007, according to JPMorgan.

(Xinhua News Agency January 7, 2010)