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Vice President appreciative
of confidence of foreign investors in the economy
Accra, March 27, Ghanadot/GNA – Vice
President John Dramani Mahama on Friday lauded the renewed
confidence of foreign investors in the country’s economy and
attributed it to the democratic strides made over the years.
Speaking at the launch of eTranzact, an online payment platform,
Vice President Mahama said it was encouraging that despite the
world economic downturn, the country continued to see increasing
interest from foreign investors willing to put a stake of their
investments into the country.
eTranzact is an online real-time payment system that allows
individuals and corporate account holders to pay for goods and
services purchased from merchants. The idea is to cut down on
the use of cash in every transaction and also mop up monies
outside the banking sector.
This is expected to create an efficient electronic platform for
banks to offer modern services and make transactions easier and
faster.
eTranzact currently operates in Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria, South
Africa, Zimbabwe and the United Kingdom.
He said investors were sensitive to the business and political
environment and only willing to put their capital in areas they
considered safe, secure and conducive.
“I believe that the current spate of interest of the investor
community is the result of what we have been able to achieve
collectively as a nation since the adoption of the 1992
Constitution - a safe, secure, politically stable, democratic
nation in which the rule of law is faithfully upheld,” he said.
Vice President Mahama said the use of ICT products to simplify
and speed up financial transactions had become a world-wide
phenomenon but most people were still stuck to cash
transactions.
He said the use of the electronic transaction platform would
reduce the need for cash and enhances credit by the financial
sector as well as cut down on the printing cost of money.
“eTranzact by investing in Ghana is introducing into our country
a facility that in today’s IT driven world has become very
important for economic growth,” he said.
Vice President Mahama called for proper regulations to enable
the companies conduct their operations in a fair and socially
responsible manner to meet their goals.
He urged management of eTranzact to quickly extend activities to
other parts of the country to enable a larger percentage of the
people benefit from the efficiency of electronic transactions.
Dr Paul Acquah, Governor of Bank of Ghana said the Branchless
Banking framework being developed with the e-zwich platform
allowed for tapping technology to provide wide range of services
and products to the public.
He said it also opened access to the unbanked segment of the
population including those who cannot read or write, in the
urban as well as rural areas.
However, Dr Acquah said to be successful, broad based
participation by users and services providers was essential for
the development of the branchless banking.
He said it was in this direction that Bank of
Ghana guidelines required that all platforms such as eTranzact
should be open and not have exclusive partnerships and that
customers should be able to undertake transactions across all
platforms.
Dr Acquah said a platform licensed for participation in the
branchless banking model should meet international technical
standards of being safe, reliable and robust, which were
essential for stability and confidence.
He expressed the hope that eTranzact’s initiative would help
deepen the payment system infrastructure and deliver basic
financial services.
Mr Valentine Obi, eTranzact Global Chief Executive Officer, said
the company would provide secure, convenient and cost effective
means to make and receive payments as well as reduce the huge
amount of money outside the banking sector.
GNA |
