Moroccan Diaspora Remittances Remain Resilient Despite Global Pandemic

Regular fund transfers are one of the three pillars of MREs support for the kingdom’s economy, alongside the earnings they generate from their stays in the country as tourists, as well as the investments they make there, says Mahmoud Arbouch, an economist at the Policy Center For The New South (PCNS). He specifies that "the travel receipts of Moroccans abroad have melted [...] during the Covid-19 crisis, dropping from 78.6 billion dirhams in 2019 to 36.4 billion dirhams in 2020, [...], and the receipts from their investments have also seen a decline due to travel restrictions and lack of visibility in the crisis context".

This is not the case with their fund transfers, which, the economist observes, have rather "shown strong resilience, with a surprising 5% increase in 2020, to reach 68 billion dirhams, compared to 64.7 billion dirhams in 2019, bucking all forecasts [...] in a particularly difficult global economic context".

And the analyst explains this picture by the consequence of the cancellation of the Marhaba 2020 operation. The 2 million Moroccans abroad expected in the kingdom for the summer holidays had to transfer to their relatives a portion of the funds dedicated to this. To this cyclical reason, Arbouch adds another of a structural nature, "the crucial role played by migrants’ transfers in the social cohesion between migrants and their relatives". Moroccans in the diaspora, moreover, are facilitators of trade with Morocco. They, by "maintaining their Moroccan consumption habits in the host country, can also promote Moroccan trade thanks to the network effect, between the different parties", explains the PCNS economist.

And, since Moroccans abroad constitute an important pillar of the country’s socio-economic development, facilitating and stimulating measures must be developed to encourage them to invest in their country, particularly the new generation of Moroccan migrants, "provided they receive the necessary assistance to identify promising projects and establish the right partnerships", he continues, welcoming the dematerialization, digitization and simplification of administrative procedures underway on site. So many "commendable initiatives that must truly incorporate the Moroccan diaspora, through clear and fluid communication, considering Moroccans abroad as a 13th Moroccan region that is highly wealth-creating".