Office des Changes (Foreign exchange Office) is a public entity, under the Ministry of Finances and Privatization supervision, endowed with the civil status and the financial autonomy. It is responsible, in accordance with legislative and lawful provisions into force, for three Main missions:
to enact measures relating to foreign exchange transactions regulation by authorizing, on a purely general or specific basis, transfers towards foreign countries and looking after the repatriation of the obligatorily transferable assets (export of goods and services proceeds ...) ;
to record and sanction the infringements with the exchange regulation;
to compile foreign trade, balance of payments and international investment position statistics.
1- Regulation of the exchange transactions and repatriations of the obligatorily transferable assets supervision
Within the framework of mission of the exchange transactions regulation, which is allotted to him, Office des Changes engaged during these last years a process of liberalization aiming at entitling authorized banks to freely carry out the major part of the transfers towards foreign countries. It thus granted delegation to those banks to freely carry out settlements relating to imports, exports, international transport, insurances and reinsurance, foreign technical assistance, travels, schooling, medical care, savings on income, as well as all the other operations considered as current.
With respect to these liberal measures, Morocco has officially adhered on January 21, 1993 to the VIIIth article of the International Monetary Fund statutes dealing with convertibility for the current transactions.
As it is currently presented in Morocco, convertibility exceeded even the requirements of the VIII th article of the IMF statutes in the sense that it extends to capital transactions in particular the foreign investments in Morocco, including those carried out by the Moroccan nationals established abroad and the external financings mobilized by the moroccan companies.
As a part of this new dynamics, Office des Changes attempts to ensure the a posteriori control on operations delegated to the banks in order to check their regularity. At the current context, this task is proved to be unavoidable in the sense that it permits to avoid fraudulent transfers of funds abroad and farthermore preserve external balances of the Moroccan economy.
Office des Changes is not limited solely to carry out the a posteriori control, but also extends its intervention to the monitoring and the supervision of the repatriation of our export proceeds which should not be Maintained abroad beyond a period of 150 days, starting from the date of dispatching the goods. Office des Changes is so invested with another fundamental mission that ensure the reconstitution of the foreign-exchange reserves.
2- Record and repression of the infringements with the exchange control regulation
This mission is reserved, within the Office des Changes, for a body of inspection created in 1963 to look after the observance of the exchange regulation.
As a part of the major changes that the exchange control has known, characterized by the adoption of liberalization and easing measures , the role of the Inspection takes more and more importance because in particular of the delegations granted to the authorized banks and the necessity of ensuring a more efficient a posteriori control.
3- Compilation of the statistics of Foreign Trade Balance of Payments and International Investment Position
The third mission of the Office des Changes, namely the compilation of foreign trade, Balance of Payments and International Investment Position statistics, is of a cardinal importance in the sense that the statistical data diffused by the Office des Changes constitute an essential tool as for the public and private economic decision makers as economic policy drive in general.
Indeed, within an increasingly liberal framework and facing uncertainties of the international environment, the availability of relevant economic information becomes more than ever essential for the economic policy drive. That'is why the Office des Changes take care of developping its information collection and processing devices in order to establish data which meet the needs of the monetary and financial authorities, the economic operators and the public in a general way. From this point of view also, the Office des Changes makes the necessary efforts to fulfill the requirements of the international data compilation and dissemination standards related to foreign trade, balance of payments and International Investment Position statistics particularly the IMF Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS) to which our country intends to adhere.
With the aim of ensuring a better dissemination of information, Office des Changes issues several statistical publications in particular the note entitled " foreign exchanges monthly indicators", the monthly statistic bulletin, the quarterly balance of payments, the annual trade balance, the annual report on the balance of payments as well as the Yearbook of foreign trade available in hardcopy and CD-Rom. It also has an Internet Web site countaining data on foreign exchanges and the exchange regulation.
