The digital revolution is one of the greatest changes of our time, said last Wednesday
in Rabat, the Wali of Bank Al-Maghrib, Abdellatif Jouahri, emphasizing that it is gradually transforming
but profound the processes of production and the organization of markets and exchanges.
“The digitization of services, the uberization of the economy, and the multiple risks of cybercrime,
among other things, pose challenges of unprecedented complexity in terms of regulation", however
conceded the head of regulation of the banking system.
The challenges brought about by digitalization are such that “regulating emerging industries and services requires
an approach that combines the essential flexibility, to allow their emergence and development, with the
rigor necessary to avoid any slippage and minimize the harmful effects on consumers, the activity
and economic stability", he explained during an international meeting under the theme: "The
competition policies and law: national experiences and international partnership”.
The Governor of the Central Bank of the Kingdom of Morocco, who intervened at this meeting of two
days, organized on the initiative of the Competition Council and in which eminent experts from
from Morocco and abroad, noted, by way of example, that "the boom experienced by the production of
data and its use to create added value poses many challenges in terms of competition
and protection of personal information”.
As Abdellatif Jouahri pointed out, some of the challenges of producing data are "
sometimes even of a political nature, as illustrated by the case of FacebookCambridge Analytica", indicating, in
Besides, that the development of social media, the scourge of fake news and their political, social
and economic are also another illustration of the implications of the digital revolution and the challenges
that it generates in terms of regulation.
The other example of the difficulty national authorities and even international institutions have in defining
an appropriate approach to understand all the consequences of technological innovations
feels in "perplexity and hesitation about the approach to adopt in the face of the development of
crypto-assets and digital currency,” he continued.
It should be noted that in the financial field, Abdellatif Jouahri made it known that "in addition to the implications of
digitization, the multiplication of difficulties in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis has led to a
unprecedented tightening of banking regulation”.
If the resurgence of economic difficulties and the sluggishness of bank credit plead for its easing,
in order to reinvigorate demand and growth, it is clear that calls are
multiplied for the continuation of this tightening.
For the Governor of the Central Bank, the situation is such that regulators must agree to
find and above all preserve “a difficult and often fragile balance between the tightening of the rules
prudential measures for the stability, moreover essential, of the banking and financial system and their
easing to further facilitate financing and contribute to the recovery of the economy”.

Especially since the development of Fintech and the demands of combating change
climate change, as well as those increasingly strengthened to combat the financing of terrorism and the
money laundering further complicate the task of regulators, he said.
In this case, and even if it would result in a veritable regulatory deluge facing the
financial sector, Abdellatif Jouahri thinks that the real challenge for the financial systems of the countries
emerging and developing will consist of “ensuring compliance with international standards such as
than those of the FATF or those imposed by certain major economies, such as American law
FATCA”.
For a country like Morocco, which aspires to emergence through greater openness and wider
integration into global value chains, "this compliance is a necessity that requires effort
and trade-offs that are often difficult for regulatory authorities,” he underlined.