Morocco decided to keep its key interest rate unchanged at 3.25 %, said the country’s central bank, Bank al Maghrib, in a statement following its quarterly board meeting,

The bank has also kept commercial banks's reserve rate unchanged at 8 percent, saying the banking system enjoyed the right balance of liquidity.

The bank's Governor Abdellatif Jouahri told reporters, that inflation was tame and the economic growth was expected to slow down to stand between 3.0 and 4.0 per cent in 2010, compared with the projected 5.0 per cent to 6.0 per cent growth estimated for 2009.

Mr Jouahri considered also that an exchange rate system is more flexible to adapt to Morocco's expanded opening toward more foreign markets and that will bolster export activities hit by the global economic downturn.

Morocco has recently lost some of its foreign export due to poor exchange rates with European countries during the global economic recession. However, the Moroccan economy would grow by between 5 percent and 6 percent this year, according to the bank al Maghrib statement, mainly on the back of strong cereals harvest during 2009, before slowing down to 3 percent or 4 percent next year.

Morocco currently has a controlled foreign exchange system, and its currency, the dirham, is not fully convertible. The value of the dirham against the U.S. dollar rose 4.1 percent in the third quarter this year from the previous period and dropped 0.83 percent of its value compared with the euro,