Optimality of Morocco’s Currency Basket

Abstract

The objective of this article is to analyze the behavior of the monetary authorities of Morocco in the readjustment of the official weights of anchor currencies in Dirham basket on April 13, 2015. To do this, we are taking into account the objective of the external financing constraints for comparing, with different scenarios, the optimal weights with the implicit weights of the currencies. Such a comparison proves that the authorities take more into consideration the structure of the commercial exchanges than that of the debt for the choice of the optimal weight of the anchor currency. In the final part of the paper, we have delved deeper into this issue by proposing a detailed sectoral study to examine the impact of the exchange rate on the trade balance for each activity sector. Our intention is to find out which foreign currency seems more volatile against the local currency in order to lead the economy to manage the stability of dirham by increasing its weight in the basket. As a result, the higher price elasticity of the Dollar against the dirham encourages Moroccan monetary authorities to increase its weight in the basket.