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Ghana, India to waive visas for diplomatic travels

Xinhua, June 15, 2016 Adjust font size:

Ghana and India have entered into an agreement to waive visas for officials of either country traveling on diplomatic passports.

This was part of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) reached here between President John Dramani Mahama of Ghana and visiting Indian President Pranab Mukherjee here on Monday.

Also among the three accords reached between the two leaders were the establishment of a joint commission on cooperation and the MoU on foreign relations.

Speaking before the agreements, President Mahama said the two countries had been holding bilateral discussions on agricultural productivity and research, nuclear power for development, and rural electrification.

"We are also engaged in a joint infrastructural project, especially in the areas of railways construction and solar plant development. One area that is worth considering is international security collaboration," Mahama stressed.

He said similar discussions led to the provision of the 35 million U.S. dollars for the recently completed Komenda sugar factory and the 24 million dollars facility for the cultivation of sugarcane to feed the factory.

The Ghanaian president added that discussions were also held on the financing of the fish processing projects in Ghana and a facility of 30 million dollars to update the Yendi Water Project in the Northern Region.

The Indian President, who was on a three-day official visit to Ghana, arrived late Sunday and was feted to a banquet at the Flagstaff House.

Economic trade between the two countries is a little above 1.0 billion dollars but the visiting president said there was the need to leverage their economic interactions to increase trade to 5.0 billion dollars by 2020.

"India will therefore deepen bilateral relations in the areas of trade, investment and the expansion of economic cooperation in the coming days of our cooperation," Mukherjee stated.

He expressed the hope that Ghana would receive a substantial amount of its share of the 10 billion dollars facility India was making available to African countries in the next five years as part of their agreement signed in October, 2015, during the India-African business forum in New Delhi.

The Indian leader left Ghana for Cote d'Ivoire on Tuesday for the second leg of his two-nation African tour. Endit