Morocco Sees Alarming 12.5% Spike in Bounced Check Value, Affecting 670,000

Every year, incidents related to check payments continue to grow, to the point of tarnishing its profitability. At the level of merchants and individuals, bounced checks no longer have unanimous support. Pending the annual report on payment systems and means, to have detailed statistics on these incidents for the year 2018, the latest annual report of Bank Al-Maghrib indicates that 460,288 incidents were recorded last year. These incidents represent an amount of 13.3 billion dirhams, up 6.4% in number and 12.5% in value compared to 2017. However, no details were given on the reasons for these rejections.

At the level of the central incident office, 113,756 regularizations (+1.3%) were also recorded, for an amount of 1.8 billion dirhams (stable). On the other hand, the stock of unpaid check payment incidents had increased by 4.4%, to 2.9 million cases. These correspond to an amount of 85 billion dirhams, up 7.5%, representing 9.5% of total demand deposits, and an average amount per rejected check of 28,400 dirhams.

Furthermore, the number of people banned from issuing checks has seen a rate of 4.1%, with 668,988 people, of whom 87.8% are individuals. As for unpaid trade bills, they are increasing by 50%.

With regard to the number of incidents, it reached 50% and a value of 53% compared to 2017. As for the check, the insufficiency or absence of provision is the main reason for the rejection of trade bills.

To put an end to this situation, the employers’ association calls for tougher sanctions in the event of unpaid trade bills.