RABAT, June 19 (Xinhua) -- Morocco attracted only 820 million U.S. dollars of foreign direct investment (FDI) between January and May 2018, down 38.4 percent from a year earlier, the foreign exchange regulator said Tuesday.

This negative performance comes at a time when Morocco was the only country witnessing an increase in FDI flows in North Africa.

In 2017, FDI flows in Morocco increased by 23 percent to reach 2.7 billion dollars, while FDI to the rest of North Africa dropped by 4 percent, according to World Investment Report 2018 of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

During the first five months of this year, tourism revenues in Morocco hiked 18.1 percent to 2.05 billion dollars compared to the same period last year, while remittances from 4.5 million Moroccan expatriates rose 9.7 percent to nearly 2.68 billion dollars.

Tourism revenues and expatriates' remittances are the main source of Morocco's foreign currency reserves.