On January 18, people looking up Morocco’s exchange rate were in shock, after Google’s exchange rate service showed the Moroccan Dirham (MAD) was trading at half its normal value, prompting some to signal a collapse of the national currency.
Although other currency exchange platforms showed the Moroccan Dirham trading at its normal value against the Euro and US dollar, Moroccans held their breaths for an explanation.
Mere hours later, Morocco’s central bank issued a statement explaining that the issue was. nothing but a Google glitch, assuring “the plummeting MAD” was just a mistake that the world’s biggest search engine quickly fixed.
The Moroccan Observatory for Digital Sovereignty (OMSN) expressed its “concerns around Google’s position towards this matter,” calling on the group to address the situation in an official statement.
The OMSN warned that the incident “affects the digital sovereignty of Morocco … especially that the Kingdom is considered to be one of the most attractive destinations for investments,” and the Kingdom recent emphasis on boosting incoming FDIs.
**Possible repercussions on the domestic economy**
Considering the short time the glitch stayed online, experts predict it will have little to no affect on the Moroccan economy.
In general, when a currency loses value, people’s purchasing power declines, as products, especially imports, cost more money, exacerbating inflation.
In the current international economic context and materials scarcity, such devaluation of the MAD would have been a devastating blow.
However, the glitch is nothing but that, assure experts, telling Hespress EN that a currency devaluation of this scale would almost never happen out of the blue, but would be a progressive medium to long term observable trend.
**Morocco joins long list of countries experiencing a Google currency glitch**
This recent incident with Morocco is not an isolated accident.
Back in September 2021, a temporary glitch in Google’s currency converter tool showed the Emirati dirham-Indian rupee conversion rate to be much lower than it actually is, as the Indian rupee was shown to have briefly plunged to about 24.8 per UAE dirham.
The prices briefly fluctuated between Rs23 to Rs24.83 against one UAE dirham.
For Pakistan, Google glitches occur twice in three years, first in January 2019, then again in 2022, showing conversion rates to be much lower than they actually were.
Four years ago, the Google currency converter listed Nigeria’s local currency, the Naira, as going for as high as N184 to the US dollar on Friday, all because of yet another system glitch.
Another African nation, Ghana, also suffered from a scary glitch in March, 2019, where the search engine currency conversion tool showed that the country’s currency, the cedi, was trading at a rate of 22.72 to one US dollar, an increase of more than 300% compared to that of the day before.
What seemed to be a disastrous financial crash for a country that was struggling with a devaluating currency was quickly corrected as yet another system glitch from Google.
**Is Google or users to blame ?**
Google has never claimed that their converter should be the only source of checking conversion rates, as its disclaimer explicitly mentions.
“Google cannot guarantee the accuracy of the exchange rates displayed. You should confirm current rates before making any transactions that could be affected by changes in the exchange rates,” says the disclaimer.
Bank al Maghrib echoed this message, saying that the only reliable source Moroccans should turn to when inquiring about MAD exchange rates is its platform, Bloomberg and Refinitiv.
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