The intellectual origins of the international financial services (IFS) industry in Mauritius are perhaps traceable to 1972 when the Export Processing Zone (EPZ) was established with tax concessions and exemptions, an export orientation and prohibitions on domestic market access. The creation of the Offshore Financial Centre (OFC) 20 years later, applied the same ideas to financial services. Although it materialised in 1992, studies on establishing an OFC were carried out by the Bank of Mauritius (BoM) at the request of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) a decade earlier. However, the idea went into limbo during the mid-1980s; perhaps because of the debt crisis engulfing the developing world at the time, and the salutary experience of the Seychelles with its OFC. The OFC came up again for public discussion in 1988/89 when the findings of a study commissioned from an international firm became available and, concomitantly, the domestic financial sector was overhauled under a reform programme.