here. the bank has always viewed its statutory obligations relating to the clearing house and the payments system as a shared responsibility, to be discharged in conjunction with commercial banks. the cheque truncation system ( or cts ) that we are launching today exemplifies that approach very well. a change in the way we process cheques was long overdue. and we would have rolled out the cts long before, had we not unfortunately got ourselves embroiled in internal turf battles which almost paralysed decision - making at the bank and led to serious operational and procurement difficulties. the bank has a mandate to promote greater efficiency in the banking sector. the system of payments and settlements is the backbone of any economy ; it forms the arteries for conducting trade, commerce and indeed all economic activities in a country ; creating the momentum for economic growth, prosperity and welfare. it is an essential feature of the modern state. first, may i be allowed to offer a little dose of the history of the decision to modernize the way we process cheques. the port louis clearing house ( plch ) has been functioning since 1968, meeting twice a day, at the premises of the bank, every working day including once on saturdays, that is when our high street banks used to work on saturdays, ( ah! those were bis central bankers ’ speeches the days ). at that time cheques of different banks varied in size and format, which did not pose any problem when cheques were handled manually. but a challenge was presented to all the banks when in the early 1990 ’ s, the then managing director, ranapartab tacouri, tasked anil gujadhur, who was later to succeed him, to automate the handling of cheques by moving to electronic capture of essential fields. the first stage in the modernisation process, somewhat delayed for reasons we need not go into here, was the introduction of the mauritius automated clearing and settlement system ( macss ) in 2000. this provided the springboard for a quantum leap in the transformation of the payment system. a strategic decision was taken to focus on this electronic platform for real - time high - speed settlement of large - value transactions. the automation of cheque clearing was put on the back burner. i understand that they toyed with the idea of calling it mach with obvious reference to the mach number, which measures the speed of sound. this would have been quite ironical, given the leisurely speed at which matters progressed

critique is essentially about the functioning of the financial architecture not the architecture itself. it is the proof of the pudding test! it is not merely what is on the menu, nor just what is in the recipe itself, but how it affects the palate! the design standards may be seen as providing a necessary framework for the rocket ; but does it get take - off and does it reach its target? those are the ultimate requirements in rocket science : it is necessary to have a viable design but the ultimate test is in the performance itself. or as marchamont nedham put it, in 1657, in his letters from utopia 3 : “ there is no everlasting principle in government, as to any one particular form … ; … it … must be alterable according to the variety of emergent circumstances and accidents ; so that no certain form can be prescribed at all times, seeing that which may be commendable at one time, may be most condemnable at another. ” or as alexander pope put it, perhaps, more succinctly in verse : “ for forms of government let fools contest ; what e ’ re is best administered is best. ” 4 thus, in designing systems for the governance of banks, we should be concerned with what delivers the goods, the very outcomes. the task before us is to explore, in the variety of worden b ( 2007 ) literature and politics in cromwellian england, oxford. pope a ( 1734 ) essay on man, epistle 4. experience available, what works best, looking at developed and less developed countries, looking from the north to the south, from the east to the west. we may recall that for example in west africa they have had an economic and monetary union since 1994. there was a rand monetary area. there was a french franc area, the cfa. all these examples can enrich our debate, even if they do not provide the specific building blocks we need. we should explore in all this experience the association between forms and outcomes. then we can better see what are the necessary and the sufficient conditions for getting the results we seek. the issue, it seems to me, is not so much in the architecture, but in the durable capacity of the systems for delivering results. we must build for resilience of the systems. they must be secure in the face of accidents and unforeseen circumstances. we need to recognize the importance of biological models and their capacity for adaptation. or perhaps we need