Morocco, ready for shift to euro

Morocco is ready for the shift to the Euro, European single currency, and will handle the operation in all trust and serenity, sources from Morocco's central bank "Bank Al-Maghrib" said.

Morocco readied to the shift to the Euro with the assistance of France's central bank and is the first country outside the Euro zone to have been supplied with the new currency," assistant director of reserves management, Idriss Bennani Smires, told MAP.

"Bank Al-Maghrib" has purchased at the beginning of December 40 million Euro banknotes (about 400 million DH), an amount that is higher than the country's needs, he said.

Although Morocco is not a member of the European Union, it has been considered as a partner country all along the process, Smires said, adding that Morocco is involved in the operation that will be, he predicted, "a success."

He said France's bank also assisted Morocco in matters of training and dispatched to Morocco an expert to inform the cashiers of Bank Al-Maghrib and other commercial Banks on the authenticity signs of the seven Euro banknotes.

He stated further that most of the flow of foreign currencies in Morocco (some 44 billion DH or US$ 3.82 billion in 2000) come from tourism and remittances of Moroccans settled abroad, mainly in European Union countries.

Bank Al-Maghrib, which staged information campaigns to the attention of professionals, is also conducting an explanation campaign destined to the public, the executive said, adding that the shift to the Euro currency will have no impact on the customer, on the contrary the customer will have a highly secured currency and will have to negotiate only one single currency.

The former European currencies will have to be changed before the deadline of February 28, 2002, he said.

One of the banknotes' sides shows a satellite map of the EU countries and also a map of three countries of the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia), this is deemed by many observers, as a promising sign towards the Maghreb.