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Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has pledged government's commitment to put better financial systems in place to develop the economy.

According to him, the Nana Addo administration is pro-business friendly and so is devising ways to factor the entire nation in the financial systems.

Dr. Bawumia made this known during his interaction with business moguls and stakeholders in the mobile and banking sectors at the 5th Ghana Eonomic Outlook and Business summit.

Delivering a speech during the event, the Veep told the gathering that the "government of Nana Akufo-Addo is pro-business. It goes without saying and we have made it a point that we want to build the most business friendly economy in Africa."

He noted that the vision of this administration is to cushion Ghanaians financially and put an end to poverty in the country.

"We are therefore keen on developing the financial sector to deepen financial inclusion and bring more Ghanaians out of extreme poverty. This informed the decision of the President to abolish the 17.5% VAT on financial services as announced by the Minister of Finance in his budget which was presented on the 2nd of March.

“The abolishing of the VAT of financial services is meant to encourage the development of financial transactions and mobile money because research has proven that countries with strong financial systems also experience strong economic growth.”

Dr. Bawumia believed having a proper financial system which includes the citizens, it will positively affect major economic sectors and help develop the country.

“Ghana is really a blessed country when you look at the financial inclusion architecture in this country. The banks are there. The mobile money companies are there, the Central bank and the GhIPSS, and the payment system architecture with e-zwich which tries to target the unbanked. So, we have an architecture that quite frankly I don’t see in any other country in Africa. I really don’t see it. We have been blessed with a major architecture which has been developed separately. The e-zwich architecture is very [very] important. The Telcos have an architecture which is very [very] important. The banks have an architecture which is very [very] important," he stated.

He urged mobile money issuers to allow transactions from one network to the other as done in other African countries.

“This is a very important issue, and it is an issue that all stakeholders should turn their attention to...I want to challenge GhIPSS and the banks: Government would like to see us do this, this year, that we successfully have interoperability between our key players, the telcos, the banks and the payment system architecture in this country".

The Vice President also commended the Central Bank for introducing E-money issuer guidelines to govern the mobile money sector and called on the stakeholders to "continue to urge the Central Bank to look at the regulations in this sector to try to better understand the space, so that the sector can grow and at the same time keep our financial system stable.”

Present at the forum were Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr. Johnson Asiama, Deputy Communcations Minister George Andah, stakeholders from the banking and mobile sectors among other dignitaries.