The growth rate of bank loans in Morocco has slowed in 2024, despite rising to over 1,164 billion dirhams.
Follow-Up
Bank Al-Maghrib reported that the total amount of bank loans in the kingdom reached 1,164.6 billion dirhams in 2024, marking an increase of 4.4% compared to 2023, which equates to 72.9% of the gross domestic product.
While this performance exceeds the average of the five years prior to the COVID-19 crisis, it reflects a slowdown compared to 2023, as detailed in the central bank’s annual report on the economic, monetary, and financial situation.
Bank Al-Maghrib attributed this slowdown primarily to the decreased growth rate of loans directed to financial intermediaries (13.8% compared to 20.1% in 2023), alongside weak growth in financing directed to the non-financial sector, which increased by only 2.6% compared to 2.9% the previous year.
In terms of the nature of institutions, the decline is mainly due to a reduction in financing for public institutions, where investment loans fell by 10.4% after recording a rise of 5.1%. Likewise, the growth rate of treasury facilities decreased to 30.9% from 54.2%.
For households, the total outstanding loans rose by only 1.7% in 2024, compared to 2.1% in 2023, attributed to a 3.7% decrease in loans to self-employed individuals. Conversely, loans directed to individuals maintained stable growth at 2.1%, with 1.6% for consumer loans (up from 0.7%) and 1.6% for housing loans (down from 1.8%).
As for private non-financial companies, loans saw a slight recovery of 0.6% in 2024, compared to 0.1% in 2023, thanks to the slowdown in the decline of treasury facilities (-4% after -8.9%), a rebound in real estate financing (+6.9% after -2.5%), and accelerated equipment loans (+10.2% after +6.8%).
Regarding delinquent loans, they rose by 2.8% to reach 97.5 billion dirhams, with a coverage ratio of 68.8%. This increase is attributed to a 5.7% rise among households and 0.9% for private companies, raising the overall delinquency rate to 8.4%, with 10.4% for individuals and 12.6% for businesses.
Sector-wise, loans grew significantly by 12.3% in extractive industries, 6.5% in electricity, gas, and water, and 4% in construction and public works. In contrast, declines were noted in tourism (-12.9%), automotive trade (-2.3%), and textile, clothing, and leather industries (-12.4%).
Meanwhile, non-banking financial institutions increased their financing for the non-financial sector by 6% to reach 180.6 billion dirhams, distributed among finance companies (148.8 billion dirhams), foreign banks (11.7 billion dirhams), and microfinance associations (9.6 billion dirhams).
