The European Union will continue to grapple with a debt crisis for the next two or three years, Russia's former finance minister Alexei Kudrin said on Friday.
Answering a question from a Twitter user whether Italy would return to the lira in 2012, Kudrin said that would not be clear until after 2012.
"The debt crisis in Europe will unfold over (the next) two or three years. This is why the fate of the Italian currency will be known after 2012," Kudrin wrote on his Twitter account.
He said in late January that the currency crisis in Europe had already started and that he was 90 percent certain that one to three states would leave the eurozone. Greece, Ireland and Portugal have the largest debt problems, while Spain and Italy may enter the high-risk zone in the near future.
As for gold, Kudrin wrote that it is overrated and gold prices might grow in the short-term but will decline after that.
Prices for gold went up nearly 10 percent in 2011, an eleventh straight year of gains and the longest growth streak since 1920. Investors view gold as a safer alternative to unstable currencies and highly volatile shares amid debt crisis in the EU states and rising inflation in various countries.
