Jamaica collaborates with India for digital reforms

The island nation of Jamaica is collaborating with the Republic of India to grow in the field of digital technology. The officials of both nations took steps to strengthen the partnership and signed a memorandum of understanding. The information was disclosed during the sitting of the House of Representatives.

During the recent gathering of the representatives, Andrew Holness, the Prime Minister of Jamaica, shared the details of the partnership with India for digital infrastructure. The intention of the collaboration is to build digital public infrastructure in the island nation.

It is said that the agreement will lead to cooperation in sharing and building the technology infrastructure. This is targeted to assist the nation in financial inclusion along with social and economic transformation.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness mentioned about the implementation of the UPI digital payment system in Jamaica. UPI stands for unified payment interface, which is a technology developed by India for real-time payments.

The system was quickly accepted by the Indians and is now popularly used in all places. UPI enabled people to send and receive payments through mobile phones. The money can be transferred to personal accounts or to merchants through online and offline mediums.

The UPI payment system was so successful that after India, it was accepted by many other countries like Bhutan, UAE, Malaysia, Singapore, Nepal, the UK, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Japan, the US, and many others. Now, Jamaica is stepping forward to accept the system for easy digital payments.

The implementation of the project will be done under e-Gov Jamaica and will be applied on the ground level with the help of the Bank of Jamaica. The officials stated that the government is dedicated to improving the public digital infrastructure and investment.

It is expected that such projects will help in better service delivery, not just for the citizens but also for the visitors. Prime Minister mentioned, “This cooperation of Jamaica with India is to catalyse it and to make it much more widely available.”

Prime Minister mentioned in his words that under this collaboration with India and technology adaptation, Jamaica will see major improvement. It will reduce the long time for people standing in line to receive payments.

PM Andrew Holness said, “India used UPI, their digital public infrastructure, and national identification system to increase public social safety net payments. They explained how they are increasing benefits by including more farmers in their social safety net, that Jamaica also needs to do.”

He added, “One of the complaints which old system is it’s not reaching the persons who should be getting it. There are a lot of leakages and double counting. It pains my heart when I pass the postal offices and I see the long lines and people standing up to collect their payments. Today, we can eliminate that with a well-structured unified payment interface.”