Moroccan Dirham Strengthens Against Euro and Dollar, Reserves Rise

A good week for the Moroccan currency. According to the Moroccan central bank, it appreciated against the two benchmark currencies, namely the US dollar and the euro.

During the same week, the Moroccan bank indicates that it did not carry out any auction operations on the foreign exchange market. It added that as of August 16, net international reserves stood at 232.2 billion dirhams, up 0.3% from the previous week. These have seen a year-on-year increase of 2.7%.

Regarding interventions in the money market, Bank Al-Maghrib injected a total amount of 104.6 billion dirhams during the same week, including 102.3 billion dirhams in the form of 7-day advances on call for tenders and 2.3 billion dirhams granted under the program to support the financing of SMEs.

During this period, the interbank rate stood at 2.25%, and the trading volume at 3.2 billion dirhams, the note states, indicating that in the form of 7-day advances, the central bank injected 78 billion dirhams.

As for the stock market, the Masi fell by 0.1%, bringing its performance since the beginning of the year to +1.7%. However, the weekly change in the benchmark index mainly reflects the declines in the sectoral indices of "mining" by 3%, "building and construction materials" by 0.7% and "banks" by 0.3%. On the other hand, the indices relating to the "telecommunications" and "agri-food" sectors appreciated by 0.6% and 0.3% respectively.

Bank Al-Maghrib also recalls that the trading volume stood at 1.8 billion dirhams, including 1.7 billion dirhams in the form of a capital increase. On the central equity market, the average daily trading volume stood at 17.5 million dirhams, after 47 million dirhams the previous week.