Cash discovered with a drug trafficker in Tangier. credit: DGSN
The Wali of Bank Al-Maghrib (BAM), Abdellatif Jouahri, underlined, Tuesday in Rabat, the need to strengthen financial education and promote the adoption of digital technology in financial transactions to cope with the increase in circulation fiduciary in the economy.
“The level of cash in circulation in Morocco has reached around 30% of GDP, one of the highest rates in the world,” noted Jouahri during a press briefing held at the end of the second quarterly meeting of the BAM Council for the year 2024, emphasizing the importance of using the digital channel to fight against this scourge. .
In this sense, he estimated that the introduction of the future digital currency, e-dirham, will certainly contribute to curbing the circulation of cash which remains linked to a problem of education as well as the presence of the informal sector in the economy.
Cash remains the main route for financing money laundering and terrorism, due to the lack of traceability and the anonymity it provides, he said, stressing that a committee made up of banks, of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, as well as researchers was set up to examine the causes and identify the best solutions for this problem.
In this context, he indicated that 69% of direct social aid was distributed through payment establishments and 31% via the banking sector, calling for the need to further intensify efforts to broaden financial culture, particularly among citizens and vulnerable populations.
“Although cash is a citizen’s right, this right has its counterparts. When the government asks for cash to go digital, it does so to facilitate subsequent control, which is in the interest of the community. he argued.
He also noted that the need for bank liquidity should ease slightly, falling from 111.4 billion dirhams (billion dirhams) at the end of 2023 to 109.8 billion dirhams at the end of 2024, before widening to 133.6 billion dirhams at the end of 2023. 2025, driven primarily by the planned expansion of fiat currency.
