Moroccan Dirham Plunges Against Euro and Dollar Amid Economic Turmoil

The central bank, in its monthly review of the economic, monetary and financial situation for May 2020, reported that "as for Bank Al-Maghrib’s operations with banks, no auction session was held". On the interbank market, the volume of foreign exchange transactions against dirhams increased by 2.6 billion dirhams and stood at 15.5 billion dirhams (MMDH) in March 2020.

Regarding banks’ transactions with customers, BAM indicates that their volume increased significantly in March and stood "at 22.8 MMDH for spot purchases and 18 MMDH for term purchases, compared to 21.6 MMDH and 8.3 MMDH respectively the same month in 2019". As for sales, they amounted to "26.1 MMDH for spot transactions and 7.4 MMDH for term transactions, after 22.6 MMDH and 2 MMDH respectively".

Under these conditions, the net foreign exchange position of banks, calculated as the difference between banks’ foreign exchange claims and liabilities, was negative at 805 million dirhams (MDH) at the end of March 2020, after a negative balance of 3.5 MMDH at the end of February 2020.