What's a good bank acount for a European to open in Morocco?I have an apartment in Agadir and plan to stay for 6 months later this year. I need to open an acount as it costs me too much in transaction fees to send money from the UK to my wife's sisters acount. About £17 every time and sometimes another fee on top of that as well! I understand that there are two... |
You may want to open a "convertible dirham bank account", meaning that you could at any time re-transfer your money abroad without notice. You can open these if you are a foreign national or a Moroccan residing abroad ("MRE").
Otherwise, normal check accounts do not allow that. They are the ones Moroccan use. These cost between 20 MAD (Moroccan dirhams) a month to much more. The cheapest is definitely Banque Populaire.
On a another hand, if I remember well, when you bring (import) cash in foreign currencies to Morocco, you have to declare it when it exceeds 100,000 MAD
You can bring your £s here, well, if you have that amount. That way, you do not need to pay anything. Or, you can go to Gibraltar and withdraw.
I think you will lose a lot more if you open an account in Morocco, because they tax you every month for looking after your money, depending on the balance of your account-although it is being used by the bank. They even tax you when you want to withdraw a large amount, even though you were taxed already.
UK banks charge far less for a one off figure each month. I get charged about 2-50
The cheapest way is to carry your cash in with you and don't declare it. Probably not the safest way, but I did it the last time I stayed long term, and I was fine.
Try BMCE or The Islamic Bank ( i don't know if you will find the Islamic bank in Agadir ) , try BMCE ...
