Mauritius has been an established centre for banking and finance since the early 1900's. Tha financial services sector has passed through a general liberalisation process to become the forth pillar of the economy. This started with the review of the Banking Act 1988 and the set up of the stock exchange of Mauritius in 1989. In 1992, the Mauritius Offshore Centre was officially launched with the creation of Mauritius Offshore Business Activities
Authority(MOBAA). The MOBAA has a massive contribution to the wide network of Double
Taxation Treaties and to the enhancement of Mauritius as an Offshore Centre. In the same year, that is 1992, the Freeport was established.
In 2001/2002, there were introduction of new products and measures were taken for strengthening the regulatory framework. With the establishment of Financial services
Commission(FSC), they authorised Trust Act 2001 to allow registration of trusts, the Financial
Intelligence Act and the AntiMoney Laundering(AML)Act 2002 to prevent Money Laundering
Activities. Coming to 2007/2008, introduction of new products and bringing in greater flexibility were enforced. The Financial Services Act 2007 was compelled to enhance the flexibility in
Global business structures, the Amended Law Practitioners 2008 for setting up of Foreign
Law Firms, the Guidelines for Islamic Banking 2007 to allow for nonconventional banking and the Security Act 2008, enforced in 2007 to introduce Derivative trading.
As from 2010/2011 onwards, we have products innovation and we have moved to the presence of substantive higher value added services. Limited partnerships and Foundations was introduced with increasing interest for Wealth Management, Fund Management,
Financial