The Chinese Embassy in Ghana on Tuesday opened its new consular and visa office in East Cantonments in the suburbs of the capital Accra.

The new ultra modern office edifice erected over the last 18 months is expected to make it easier for visa applicants to the Chinese Embassy go through the process with comfort.

Opening the facility, Chinese Ambassador to Ghana Gong Jianzhong expressed hope that the use of the new 50-seater consular section will facilitate links between the peoples of China and Ghana.

He explained that he recognized the need to have a dedicated facility for the section as soon as he assumed duty in the country in 2010.

"I was confronted with the issue of the long queues in the hot weather to wait for their turn in the small office with only 10 seats," Gong said, adding that most applicants stayed in the long queue outside the office.

He said, "I therefore thought we must build a new visa office to serve visa applicants in the country."

The desire of the Chinese Embassy, according to Gong, is always to promote China-Ghana relations, strong exchanges between their two peoples and providing better services for them.

China and Ghana, he believed, shear common grounds in all aspects, and there was the need for such initiatives to continue to deepen the bonds of friendship between them.

"Applicants don't have to walk back to pay their fees anymore," he said with the Ecobank booth provided in the office to receive fees for visa applicants.

Chief Director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration Leslie Kojo Christian commended the embassy for the initiative.

"The Chinese Embassy has built this facility to ease the long queues that have been growing in front of their embassy, and this is commendable," Christian said.

This growing number of Ghanaian visa applicants to the Chinese Embassy is a demonstration of the growing cooperation between the two countries, according to the official.

"Cooperation between our two countries which started in the 1960s has been growing in leaps and bounds," he said.

The chief director said the government would soon implement plans to expand the consular and visa section of the Ghanaian Embassy in Beijing and open a new Consular Section in Guangzhou to ease the process of visa acquisition for prospective travelers from China to Ghana.

There were more than 13,000 Ghanaian visa applications to the Chinese Embassy in 2012 as bilateral trade between the two countries reached 3.47 billion U. S. dollars in 2011 alone.

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