Bank Al-Maghrib shed light, Friday in Rabat, on the political, economic, and social circumstances that accompanied the demonetization of the Moroccan silver currency, the "Hassani rial", and its replacement by the "Moroccan franc".

Hosting a conference in this sense, the former central director at Bank Al-Maghrib and author of the work "The rial and the franc: the international antecedents of the monetary system", Mohamed Bouarfa, recalled from the outset that wanting to endow the Moroccan monetary system with a strong currency, Moulay El Hassan 1st created, as early as 1881, a new silver currency, the Hassani rial, equivalent to 5 French francs and with a legal weight of 29.11 g.

Given its high weight, this currency was intended to compete with the Spanish Real in circulation on Moroccan territory. However, the financial crisis and the cost of the metal caused the hoarding of the Hassani rial and speculation on its excessive weight, which pushed Moulay Abd El Aziz to reduce the weight of the Hassani rial to that of the Latin Union (25 g), he said.