Join on WhatsApp
Join on Telegram
Rabat – Morocco’s central bank, Bank Al-Maghrib (BAM), expects remittances from Moroccans residing abroad (MREs) to reach $9.6 billion (MAD 87 billion) in 2021.
During the Board of BAM’s third quarterly meeting on Wednesday, October13, the bank stated that “after an increase of 4.9% in 2020, remittances would significantly increase by 27.7% in 2021 before falling by 5% to $9.1 billion (MAD 82.7 billion) in 2022.”
Regarding foreign trade, data from late August indicate an overall acceleration of the recovery in goods trade.
The Board also noted that exports would rise by 21.2% in 2021, and 6% increase in the following year, driven mainly by sales of car manufacturing industry and phosphate and derivatives.
With Morocco being Africa’s first passenger car manufacturer, the country’s automotive industry is relatively growing each year with car sales exceeding 160,000 units this year.
BAM’s statement further reports that Morocco’s imports would grow by 19.5% in 2021, mainly reflecting the expected increase in purchases of capital and consumer goods and in the energy bill, before slowing down to 3.8% in 2022.
Whereas travel revenues are expected to gradually decline by 8.6% to MAD 33.3 billion ($3.6 billion) this year due to the continuous health restrictions that are weighing heavily on the tourism sector.
BAM’s board remains optimistic however, and anticipates that an ease of health measures in 2022 would boost travel revenues to rebound to MAD 60.7 billion billion ($6.7 billion), but the level remains relatively lower than the MAD 78.7 billion ($8.7 billion) recorded in 2019.
In this context, the current account deficit would widen from 1.5% of GDP in 2020 to 2.8% in 2021 before easing to 1.6% the following year.
As for foreign direct investment flows, they are expected to hover around the equivalent of 3% of Morocco’s GDP over the forecast horizon, according to BAM.
Official reserve assets would amount to $37 billion (MAD 335 billion) at the end of 2021 and to $38 billion (MAS 345.1 billion) at the end of 2022, the equivalent of more than 7 months of imports of goods and services.
