The Governor of the Central Bank of Morocco, Abdellatif Jouahri, called for "the delay in the second stage of reforming the exchange rate of the Moroccan dirham towards more flexibility." Pointing out that "we must prepare well for the success of this transition, through the communication, media and the composition of all the participants".
As for the Moroccan economic growth outlook for this year, Jouahri noted that "the central bank revised its downward trend due to the poor rainfall on the agricultural crops, where we expect the value added of the agricultural sector to fall by 3.8 per cent. We also expect a slight improvement in the growth of the non-agricultural activities to reach 3.4 per cent. On this basis, Morocco's predicted growth rate for the current year will be around 2.7 per cent, compared with 3.1 per cent in 2018 and 4.1 per cent in 2017.
Jouahri clarified that "the government has announced its decision to resort to the international financial market and borrow 11 billion dirhams ($1.2 billion) to cover its needs for this year. Based on this, we expect the renewal of the cooperation agreement between Morocco and the GCC countries, taking into consideration the strategical relations but we assume that the new agreement will differ from its predecessor, in terms of value or signatory states."
Source: (Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, Edited)
