Equipped with an exchange control office, an office for the day-to-day basic banking operations and an administration department, the Bank became officially operational on September 2, 1967. Thus began central banking in Mauritius, just over six months before independence in March 1968.
Barely two months through the business of central banking the Bank faced its first tough challenge – a kind of challenge that any central banker used to feel extremely uncomfortable in the days of the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate regime.