Moroccan Dirham (MAD)

About the Moroccan Dirham

The Moroccan Dirham (MAD) is the official currency of Morocco; ISO 4217 also lists it as the currency of Western Sahara. Its symbol is د.م., and one dirham divides into 100 centimes. The dirham is issued by Bank Al-Maghrib, a public legal entity with its own financial and administrative autonomy, and trades under an intermediate exchange rate arrangement: Bank Al-Maghrib sets a daily central rate against a currency basket weighted 60 percent euro and 40 percent US dollar, and lets the dirham fluctuate within a band around that rate.

Bank Al-Maghrib describes its currency-basket arrangement, and the reform under way since 2018, as a voluntary and gradual transition from a fixed exchange rate regime toward a more flexible one. It widened the fluctuation band from ±0.3 percent to ±2.5 percent on 15 January 2018, then to ±5 percent on 9 March 2020, with the band for foreign banknotes widening further still, to ±7.5 percent, while the 60/40 euro-dollar basket weights themselves have stayed unchanged throughout.

The dirham replaced the Moroccan franc as the country's currency on 17 October 1959, shortly after Banque du Maroc, created on 30 June 1959 as the national note-issuing institute, took over from the former Banque d'Etat du Maroc, which had issued Morocco's currency since 1906. The franc itself lived on for another fifteen years as the dirham's fractional unit before Bank Al-Maghrib replaced it with the centime in 1974. The bank took its present name on 5 March 1987, when King Hassan II inaugurated its Dar As-Sikkah mint in Rabat-Salé.

Morocco introduced current-account convertibility of the dirham in January 1993, easing restrictions on cross-border payments for trade and services while capital-account transactions have stayed more closely managed. Bank Al-Maghrib's November 2005 statute reform gave the bank independence in conducting monetary policy and made preserving price stability its primary mission; a further reform, in force from 15 July 2019, strengthened that independence and broadened the bank's mandate to include financial stability and financial inclusion.

Cash circulates as 2023-series banknotes of 20, 50, 100 and 200 dirhams, alongside earlier 2012- and 2002-series notes of the same values that remain legal tender: Bank Al-Maghrib's list of demonetised notes covers only older 1960-, 1965- and 1970-type issues. Coins run from 10 centimes up to 10 dirhams: 10 and 20 centimes, ½ dirham, and 1, 5 and 10 dirhams, with older series from 2011 and before also still valid. All Moroccan banknotes and coins are produced at Dar As-Sikkah, the mint Bank Al-Maghrib inaugurated in Rabat-Salé in 1987.