Bank Al-Maghrib's gradual liberalization of the dirham

For decades Bank Al-Maghrib kept the dirham's value fixed within an extremely narrow band, a policy that delivered monetary stability but left the currency unable to absorb external shocks on its own. On January 15, 2018 the central bank began what it described as a voluntary and gradual transition toward a more flexible exchange rate, widening the dirham's fluctuation band from plus-or-minus 0.3% to plus-or-minus 2.5% around a central rate still anchored to a basket weighted 60% euro and 40% US dollar. Alongside the wider band, Bank Al-Maghrib created a formal market-maker status for participating banks, obliging them to post firm two-way quotes that the central bank itself then used to set official reference rates, and it redesigned its own market intervention framework around foreign-exchange auctions so it would act as a lender of last resort rather than the default counterparty to every trade. Only after judging that the first phase's objectives, deeper foreign-currency market liquidity and greater risk awareness among market participants, had been met did the bank widen the band again, to plus-or-minus 5%, in March 2020, moving deliberately rather than on a fixed timetable toward a system genuinely driven by supply and demand.