Moroccan Dirham Weakens Against Euro and Dollar, Official Reserves Rise

During this period, no auction operation was carried out on the foreign exchange market, BAM indicates, while specifying that as of December 18, 2020, the outstanding official reserve assets stood at 314 billion dirhams (MMDH), up 7.9% from the previous week and 25.2% year-on-year.

BAM reports that an amount of 82.9 MMDH was injected, including 38.5 MMDH in the form of 7-day advances on a call for tenders and 15.3 MMDH in the form of repurchase agreements during the same period. Similarly, 24.2 MMDH and 5 MMDH were injected respectively under the SME financing support programs and for foreign exchange swap operations.

On the interbank market, the average daily trading volume stood at 5.6 MMDH. As for the interbank rate, it stood at an average of 1.5%. At the call for tenders on December 23 (value date December 24), the central bank injected an amount of 44 billion dirhams in the form of 7-day advances.

On the stock market, the MASI depreciated by 0.3%, thus bringing its underperformance since the beginning of the year to 6.4%. This development is explained by the declines in the sectoral indices of "banks" by 0.5%, and "agri-food" by 1.7%. Conversely, the indices relating to "transport services" and "distributors" experienced increases of 2.2% and 1.2% respectively.

It should be noted that as of December 24, the US dollar was worth 8,964 dirhams, while the euro was traded at 10,935 dirhams.