Moroccan Dirham Strengthens Against Euro, Holds Steady vs Dollar

During this period, no auction operation was carried out on the foreign exchange market, the central bank says, while specifying that as of March 18, 2021, the outstanding official reserve assets stood at 307.7 billion dirhams (MMDH), up 0.1% from the previous week, and 23.8% year-on-year.

BAM reports that an amount of 72 MMDH was injected, including 26.8 MMDH in the form of 7-day advances on call for tenders and 15.9 MMDH in the form of repurchase agreements during the same period. Similarly, 27.7 MMDH and 1.6 MMDH were injected respectively under the TPME financing support programs and for foreign exchange swap operations.

On the interbank market, the average daily trading volume stood at 3.1 billion. As for the interbank rate, it averaged 1.5%. At the call for tenders on March 24 (value date March 25), the central bank injected an amount of 28.6 billion dirhams in the form of 7-day advances, it is specified.

On the stock market, the MASI recorded a decrease of 1.1%, thus bringing its underperformance since the beginning of the year to 1.3%. This development is explained by the depreciation of the indices of the "banking" sectors by 0.7%, "telecommunications" by 1.6% and "agri-food" by 2.7%. Conversely, the indices of the "pharmaceutical industry" and "distributors" increased by 7.2% and 0.8% respectively.