Moroccan Dirham Strengthens Against Euro, Weakens vs Dollar in 2019

The financial institution notes that last year, the Moroccan currency appreciated by 3% against the euro. In its annual report on the economic, monetary and financial situation for the 2019 fiscal year.

In presenting this report on Wednesday before King Mohammed VI, the Wali of Bank Al-Maghrib, Abdellatif Jouahri, stressed that compared to the currencies of other major partner and competitor countries, the dirham has generally been on the rise. There were notably appreciations of 14.9% against the Turkish lira, 8.5% against the Tunisian dinar and 1.9% against the Chinese yuan. This justifies the 2.6% increase in the nominal effective exchange rate. Nevertheless, this appreciation came out at 0.4% in real terms, taking into account domestic inflation lower than that of partner and competitor countries.

Furthermore, Bank Al-Maghrib notes, the dynamics of the interbank foreign exchange market continued with an increase in the average monthly volume of foreign exchange transactions against dirhams of 21.2% to 21 billion dirhams (MMDH), while no auction operation took place, however, in 2019. BAM also specifies that for the account of banks’ operations with customers, the volume of spot foreign exchange transactions against dirhams increased from 21.7 MMDH to 23.1 MMDH for purchases and from 21.1 MMDH to 23.6 MMDH for sales, while the balance of these operations was therefore negative at 525 million dirhams (MDH), after having been positive at 536 MDH in 2018.

In the same report, BAM notes that the volume of banks’ exchanges with their foreign correspondents averaged 41.1 MMDH per month, up 11% from 2018, while banks’ foreign currency deposits abroad fell by 19.4% to 6.8 MMDH.