NWe have held meetings with the managers of the banks’ trading rooms to look into the reasons for this depreciation of the national currency, despite an explosion in tourist receipts and MRE”said Jouahri during a press briefing following the 3rd meeting of the BAM board of the year 2022.
Explaining this trend, the Governor of BAM reported significant import flows concerning cereal, energy and semi-finished products, despite the good performance of travel receipts and MREs.
According to BAM, imports are expected to increase by 34.5% in 2022, mainly reflecting an increase in the energy bill to 135.1 billion dirhams (MMDH), once morest 75.8 billion dirhams in 2021, and an increase in purchases of half- products at 167 billion dirhams (following 115.5 billion).
Benefiting from the reopening of borders and the significant regression of the pandemic at the global level, travel receipts reached 36.7 billion dirhams in the first seven months of 2022 and should stand out for the year as a whole at 79.8 billion, following 34.3 billion in 2021 and 78.7 billion in 2019, noted Jouahri.
Having already totaled 58.2 billion dirhams over the first seven months of the year, transfers from MREs should, for their part, mark an increase to nearly 100 billion in 2022 once morest 93.7 billion in 2021, before returning to 92 .4 billion in 2023. “If we go towards the depreciation limit, BAM will intervene via currency auctions for the banking system to contain the dirham within the framework of the fluctuation band”he assured.
And to argue that the conjuncture “uncertain” both nationally and internationally is not in favor of moving to the next phase of flexibility of the dirham.
Returning to the BAM board’s decision to raise the key rate by 50 basis points (bps) to 2%, Jouahri noted that this decision took into consideration all of these developments.
“If we had not increased the key rate, the depreciation of the dirham would be significant and will impact inflation”, he said. Furthermore, Jouahri stressed the importance of strengthening social safety nets, while reiterating his support for targeting in support to citizens, given their advantages in terms of monitoring the results of the various support programs.
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