The Central Bank of Morocco has published two working papers examining the potential design and economic implications of a central bank digital currency for Morocco. The research supports a gradual, long-term approach and explores how a digital dirham could improve payment efficiency and financial inclusion while containing risks to bank funding, monetary transmission, financial stability and cybersecurity. The first paper outlines a potential retail digital dirham with mixed token and account access, partial anonymity linked to identification thresholds, offline functionality and holding and transaction limits. It identifies a non-interest-bearing, two-tier model as a possible structure, with the central bank issuing and supervising the currency while banks, payment institutions and fintechs handle distribution and customer relationships. A proof of concept using both centralized and distributed technology confirmed the technical feasibility of a retail CBDC, while a separate experiment with the Central Bank of Egypt is assessing cross-border payments. Any deployment would require stronger digital infrastructure, legal clarity, interoperability, data protection and cyber resilience. The second paper develops a small open economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model calibrated to Morocco. Under its baseline assumptions, CBDC holdings reach about 6.6% of annual GDP and long-run output rises by 0.7%, with modest improvements in the economy’s ability to absorb financial and money demand shocks. The model finds smaller benefits for most real and external shocks and concludes that the policy rate, supported where needed by macroprudential tools, would remain the principal stabilization instrument.
Central Bank of Morocco publishes two studies on digital dirham design and macroeconomic effects
The Central Bank of Morocco published two working papers on the design and macroeconomic effects of a potential digital dirham. The research explores a capped, non-interest-bearing retail CBDC distributed through a two-tier model, with offline and cross-border capabilities. Model simulations indicate a 6.6% of GDP CBDC stock could raise long-run output by 0.7% and modestly improve resilience to financial shocks.