Following discussions with Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday announced plans to integrate India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) with Malaysia’s Paynet. Both the leaders highlighted the digital economy priorities of both nations and praised the success of India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI). They also commended the ongoing engagements in the area of payment systems between India and Malaysia.
PM Modi said, “We should enhance our mutual cooperation in areas of new technology, such as semiconductors, Fintech, defense industry, A.I. and quantum. We have emphasized upon stepping up the review of the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement between India and Malaysia. It has been decided to establish a Digital Council and to create a Start-up Alliance for cooperation in digital technology. Work will also be done on connecting India’s UPI and Malaysia’s Paynet.”
The Enhanced Strategic Partnership between India and Malaysia is completing a decade. The leaders have decided to elevate the partnership to a “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership”. They also witnessed the exchange of MoUs on cooperation in the fields of Recruitment, Employment and Repatriation of Workers; Ayurveda and other Traditional Systems of Medicines; Digital Technologies; Culture, Arts and Heritage; Tourism; Public Administration and Governance Reforms; Youth and Sports; and Financial Services between Labuan Financial Services Authority (LFSA) and International Financial Services Centres Authority, India (IFSCA).
Both Prime Ministers appreciated the collaboration between the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)and Bank Negara Malaysia to promote usage of local currency settlement in bilateral trade and investments, and encouraged industries on both sides to further facilitate the invoicing and settlement of trade in local currencies, i.e. Indian Rupee and Malaysian Ringgit.
In the area of digital cooperation, both Prime Ministers welcomed the signing of the MoU on Digital Technologies and encouraged the early convening of Malaysia-India Digital Council to guide engagement in the digital realm and accelerate collaboration in this area such as Digital Public Infrastructure, digital B2B partnership, digital capacity building, cyber security, emerging technologies such as 5G, quantum computing, cloud computing, Internet of Things among others, between the two countries.