Coalition forces assumed control of the whole territory, and on 7 July 2003 the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Paul Bremer, announced that a new Iraqi dinar would be printed and exchanged for the two existing currencies at a rate that implied that one Swiss dinar was worth 150 Saddam dinars. The exchange was to take place over the period 15 October to 15 January. It is now virtually complete. The new dinars, like the Swiss, were printed by De la Rue in a very short space of time using plants in Britain and several other countries, and were flown into Iraq on 22 flights using Boeing 747 and other aeroplanes. The fact that the populations of both North and South Iraq have been prepared to exchange their old notes for new dinars reflects the confidence which they have in the future of the institutions backing the new Iraqi dinar. The 150 parity is barely half the rate the Swiss dinar reached at its peak (see Chart 6). 15  10  The minutes are archived on the KRG web site www.krg.org/news.
14  Sources for these data include the United Nations (from the oil-for-Food program) and the Central Bank of Iraq. 8  BIS Review 5/2004  clearly a consequence of the evolution of the actual and expected money supplies in the two territories. Given the monetary and fiscal policies pursued by the Saddam regime, the rise of the Swiss dinar against the Saddam dinar is, perhaps, understandable. But what is less obvious is the path of the Swiss dinar against the US dollar. Chart 4 shows the Swiss dinar-dollar exchange rate from 1997 onwards. Chart 4: The Swiss Dinar/Dollar exchange rate, Jul 1997-Oct 2003 0  Swiss $  5 10 Swiss $  15 20 25 30 35 Jul-97  Jul-98  Jul-99  Jul-00  Jul-01  Jul-02  Jul-03  Source: United Nations, Central Bank of Iraq  After fluctuating in the early 1990s, the Swiss dinar rose sharply against the US dollar from the middle of 2002 as the prospect of an end to the Saddam regime increased. It rose from around 18 to the dollar in May 2002 to about 6 to the dollar by the beginning of May 2003 when the war ended. That appreciation reflected expectations about (i) the durability of the political and military separation of Kurdish from Saddam-controlled Iraq and (ii) the likelihood that a new institution would be established governing monetary policy in Iraq as a whole that would retrospectively back the value of the Swiss dinar.