India and Ghana are looking not only at connecting their respective digital payments systems, India’s Unified Payments Interface(UPI) and Ghana’s Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GHIPSS), but also at harmonizing them for creating a new, more secure, and cheaper mechanism for fund transfers.
Furthermore, negotiations are taking place on these possibilities: Digital Transformation Solutions, Memorandum of Understanding, Local Currency Settlement system, and perspective Africa, the Continental Free Trade Agreement(AfCFTA).
The Department of Commerce reveals that they have a target of achieving that India’s UPI will be linked and powered by GHIPSS in six months. Previously, besides being implemented in nations such as Singapore and the UAE, the UPI had talks with Nigerian officials to adopt a similar model in their country.
The team that led the visit with the Assistant Secretary for Commerce in the Department of Commerce was called India. The team, led by Mr. Amardeep Singh Bhatia, agreed that matters between the two states were the main issue during their visit to Ghana on May 2nd and 3rd. Indeed, the partnership between NPCI International and the Bank of Namibia to build up UPI-like real-time payments in Namibia was disclosed not long ago.
Bilateral trade between India and Ghana has risen amidst a healthy 1.2% to 2.48% annual increment recorded within the last fiscal year of 2022-23 ($2.87 B) from 2021-22 ($2.6 B). Ghana’s balance of trade favors her, largely as India’s goods and services imports from Ghana account for 80% of the total imports, with gold being the major import from Ghana.
