Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has taken a swipe at the previous National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration and its assigns for their handling of the Mobile Money Interoperability contract.
The NDC has questioned the decision of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration to review the initial contract awarded to Sibton at a cost of GH¢4.6 billion- equivalent to $1.1 billion.
The NPP administration later awarded the contract to the Ghana Inter Bank Payment and Settlement Systems (GhiPPS) for $4.5 million, thereby saving the country over $1 billion.
Surprisingly, the NDC has raised questions about the scope of the system to the surprise of many people.
Speaking at the launch of ‘PaySwitch,’ a Ghanaian company that provides integrated payment solutions that facilitate the circulation of money, Dr Bawumia said, “You’ve heard a lot of discussions this week about the cost of the payment system, especially this interoperability switch; when I first become aware it was a situation where three companies apparently bid for the right to provide payment system into interoperability.”
According to him, “One company bid GH¢14 million to provide that while another company for the same scope of work bid GH¢5 million, and yet a third company for the same scope of work bid GH¢4.6billion.
“And guess who won the GH¢4.6billion bid, we have been able to do it for $4.5million instead of the $1 billion and we have become the leading country in interoperability.”
“So what other scope were you thinking about, what more do you want to do if you become the leading country in interoperability?” the Vice President quizzed.
Dr Bawumia said the launch of the PaySwitch was in line with the mobile money interoperability payment system geared towards making the process of financial inclusion more effective and sustainable.
He indicated that “what Ghana has done has not been done in Africa, we are doing something that is unique, we are allowing interoperability between the mobile companies.”
“That is the standard type of interoperability that you will see for example in Kenya and Tanzania. But we went one step ahead of that; we brought in the banks so that you have the telcos and the banks. So you can send money from your mobile to your bank account and from your bank account to your mobile, Ghana is the first country to get there.”
He said: “But in the next couple of months, we will be bringing the E-zwich system to be part of it, and we will then complete the triangle between the E-zwich, the banks and the Telcos, and that is phenomenal.”
PaySwitch Company, which owns a switch and state-of-the-art data center, has targeted commercial banks, non-banking financial institutions, telecommunication companies and other organizations within the payment space in Ghana and West Africa.
By Charles Takyi-Boadu, Presidential Correspondent