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Mauritius Legal rate of interest (intérêts au taux légal)

Mauritius Legal rate of interest (intérêts au taux légal) is 4.5 percent, in force since 1 Jan 2026. Last checked against the official source on 10 Aug 2026.

Mauritius' statutory default interest under article 1153 of the Code Civil Mauricien: a rate decreed by regulations of the Minister of Finance, set each year at the Bank of Mauritius Key Rate prevailing on 31 December and fixed for the following calendar year — 4.50% for 2026.

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Current value4.5 percent
In force from2026-01-01
Official sourceCode Civil Mauricien art. 1153: 'Dans les obligations qui se bornent au paiement d'une certaine somme, les dommages-intérêts résultant du retard dans l'exécution ne consistent jamais que dans la condamnation aux intérêts au taux légal décrété par règlement du Ministre des finances, sauf les règles particulières au commerce et au cautionnement' (damages for delay in paying a sum of money consist only of interest at the legal rate decreed by regulations of the Minister of Finance); Code Civil Mauricien (Rate of Interest) Regulations 2023, GN No. 19 of 2023: for the purpose of article 1153 'the rate of interest shall be equivalent to the Key Rate as determined by the central bank and prevailing at 31 December of every year, and shall be effective from 1 January to 31 December of the following year'; Bank of Mauritius MPC, 12 November 2025: Key Rate kept unchanged at 4.50 per cent per annum
Last verified2026-08-10
Verificationprimary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited.
Provenancesource fingerprint

What this value means

The legal rate is a YEAR-LOCKED SNAPSHOT, not a tracking rate: it equals the Bank of Mauritius Key Rate as it stood on 31 December and then stays put for the whole of the following calendar year, whatever the MPC does in the meantime. For 2026 it is 4.50%, being the Key Rate on 31 December 2025. The MPC raised the Key Rate to 4.75% on 20 May 2026 — that move does NOT change the 2026 legal rate; it will set the 2027 rate if the Key Rate is still 4.75% on 31 December 2026. NEXT FIXING: 1 January 2027, from the Key Rate prevailing at 31 December 2026. SCOPE AND TRAPS: (1) article 1153 covers obligations 'qui se bornent au paiement d'une certaine somme' — money debts — and expressly reserves 'les règles particulières au commerce et au cautionnement', so special commercial and suretyship rules can displace it. (2) The interest runs only from the day of the sommation de payer (formal demand), except where a law makes it run automatically — there is no automatic accrual from the invoice due date. (3) The creditor need not prove any loss; and where the debtor's bad faith caused loss independent of the delay, separate damages may be awarded on top of moratory interest. (4) Compound interest is restricted by article 1154: interest may bear interest only by judicial demand or special agreement, and only for interest already due for at least a full year. (5) The reference is the Key Rate — the Bank of Mauritius renamed its policy rate from 'Key Repo Rate' to 'Key Rate' under the monetary policy framework effective 16 January 2023, and pre-2023 citations to the Key Repo Rate track a different instrument. Retrieval note: the CommonLII copy of GN 19 of 2023 blocks automated fetchers (Cloudflare/403); the consolidated Code Civil Mauricien is retrievable from FAOLEX.

Get it programmatically

curl https://afriref.dev/v1/mu/statutory-interest
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History:    curl https://afriref.dev/v1/mu/statutory-interest/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://afriref.dev/provenance/mu/statutory-interest

Other Mauritius series: Bank of Mauritius Key Rate · VAT standard rate · VAT registration threshold · National Minimum Wage (full-time worker, monthly) · Public holidays · CPI inflation (year-on-year) · Corporate income tax rate · Withholding tax rates · Personal income tax bands · Statutory social-insurance contributions

The same figure elsewhere: Morocco · Mozambique · Namibia · Niger · Nigeria · all 34