The Moroccan Central Bank will not Float the Dirham and Expects a Growth of 6.7 percent

  • Rabat, Kingdom of Morocco
  • 22 December 2021
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The Governor of the Central Bank of Morocco, Abdellatif Jouahri, confirmed that "the Kingdom is currently not ready to move to a second stage in order to float the exchange rate of the dirham, due to the current conditions arising from the uncertainty associated with the Corona pandemic." He considered that "the Kingdom is not ready to fall into an exchange rate crisis in the future, to be forced to use the foreign exchange balance to face the crisis."

After its quarterly meeting, the Moroccan Central Bank raised its inflation forecast to 1.4 percent by the end of 2021 and to 2.1 percent next year. The growth rate is expected to rise to 6.7 percent this year from a contraction of 6.3 percent last year, on the back of the vaccination campaign, financial and monetary incentives, and a good harvest.

According to the Moroccan Central Bank, remittances from Moroccans working abroad are expected to grow to a record level of 95 billion dirhams (10 billion dollars) this year, exceeding the expected tourism revenues of 33.1 billion dirhams, a decrease of 9.2 percent compared to last year. While foreign exchange reserves will rise from 330.4 billion dirhams (35.7 billion dollars) this year to 341.6 billion in 2022 and 345.7 billion in 2023. The fiscal deficit will shrink from 6.9 percent of GDP this year to 6.3 percent in 2022 and 5.8 percent in 2023.

Source (Al-Araby Al-Jadeed Newspaper, Edited)