The CBI's primary objectives are to ensure domestic price stability and foster a stable competitive market based financial system.

The Iraq Currency Board pursued a "conservative monetary policy, maintaining very high reserves behind the dinar", which was "further strengthened by its link to the British pound".

[5] Since switching over to its own central bank, the Iraqi monetary system was "replete with mismanagement, coercive stop-gap measures, and the production of an unstable, unreliable currency which ha[d] not been tradeable on the international market for [many] years".

[10] U.S. Department of the Treasury and Coalition Provisional Authority inspectors discovered the bank in ruins after the Battle of Baghdad and mass looting after the invasion.

Then Central Bank chief Sinan Al Shabibi warned that the ruling would threaten the institution's requisite independence.

[16] Currently, the acting Governor of the Central Bank of Iraq is Abdel Basset Turki, who also happens to be the head of the state-spending watchdog the Board of Supreme Audit.

Initial talks about the project were held in Istanbul, Turkey, on 14 August 2010, in the presence of the Central Bank Governor Sinan Al Shabibi.