Apart from preventing double taxation between the Alpine and west African country, it is also hoped to contribute to the development of bilateral economic relations.

The DTA, signed already in July 2008, is designed to encourage direct Swiss investment in Ghana.

When negotiated, the agreement was in line with what then was Swiss practice. However, in March last year, the Swiss Federal Council changed its administrative assistance policy to be in accordance with the DTA standard set by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

For the time being, however, the Ghanaian-Swiss agreement will not be renegotiated, and will therefore not be OECD-conform (Ghana is not a member of the Paris-based international organization). A spokesperson for the Swiss government told this publication that Switzerland will focus on bringing DTAs on OECD standards with EU and OECD member states primarily; however, the spokesperson also said that there is a possibility that the Ghanaian pact might be revised at some point.

Towards the end of last year, Swiss OECD conform DTAs received some media attention, after the Federal Council announced that, if a citizens’ initiative was to collect 50,000 signatures demanding a popular referendum on these DTAs, which are believed to further water down the Swiss banking secrect, such referendum would take place.

WealthBriefing understands that the referendum could only be initiated in mid-2010, after parliament has discussed the issue.