Moroccan Dirham Strengthens Against Euro, Holds Steady vs Dollar

A tendering operation was carried out on the foreign exchange market on December 7, Bank Al-Maghrib (BAM) indicates, specifying that it retained a total amount of 670 million dollars, the equivalent of 6.2 billion dirhams (MMDH). The central bank also states that as of December 3, 2021, the outstanding official reserve assets stood at 322.4 MMDH, almost stagnant from one week to the next and up 10.7% year-on-year.

Likewise, an amount of 85 MMDH was injected, including 37.2 MMDH in the form of 7-day advances on call for tenders, 22.7 MMDH in the form of repurchase agreements, during the same period, BAM also reports. 25 MMDH were injected as part of the support programs for SME financing and 100 million dirhams (MDH) for foreign exchange swap transactions.

On the interbank market, the average daily trading volume stood at 3.1 MMDH. As for the interbank rate, it stood at an average of 1.5%. During the call for tenders on December 8 (value date December 9), the central bank injected 30.3 MMDH in the form of 7-day advances.

On the stock market, the MASI appreciated by 0.5%, thus bringing its performance since the beginning of the year to 17.2%. This development is explained by the increases in the sectoral indices of transport services by 1.3%, banks by 0.9% and building and construction materials by 0.6%. Conversely, the indices of the financing companies and other financial activities and oil and gas sectors fell by 0.9% and 0.9% respectively.

As for the overall trading volume, it amounted to 327.5 MDH after 684.9 MDH the previous week. As for the average daily volume on the central equity market, it stood at 64.4 MDH against 134.9 MDH the previous week.