$50bn global trade prospects for Pakistan’

[fatman17]

$50bn global trade prospects for Pakistan’

By Romail Kenneth

KARACHI: A $50 billion industry with 30% per annum growth rate linked with $700 billion E-commerce trade world wide is available for Pakistan, said Abdullah Butt, President, Association of Call Centre Operators (ACCO) Pakistan.

Currently there are 70 call centres operating in the country and still there is so much business available internationally, that even if 100 call centres each of 100 seats are working in Pakistan, still there will be more business coming in, he said while talking to Daily Times here on Friday.

Butt said, despite supporting this industry the government has never taken serious steps to promote this industry, which can bring huge investment in the country and could help to an instinct control unemployment, which is rapidly increasing every year.

For any international call centre operations, the nerve is telecom link and in Pakistan the weakest support one has is the telecom link and the cost of the utility is so high that the more you use the more you pay. The process of import is very cumbersome and expensive, he added.

Visa constraints on international employees and investors; security issues; a very heavy bureaucratic approach towards the industry; lack of mass awareness of this industry by government and private media; no training subsidisation by government; lack of IT- enabled infrastructure are some of the problems.

this only shows the potential in our country if only the law and order situation normalises.

 

[salman nedian]

$50bn global trade prospects for Pakistan’

By Romail Kenneth

KARACHI: A $50 billion industry with 30% per annum growth rate linked with $700 billion E-commerce trade world wide is available for Pakistan, said Abdullah Butt, President, Association of Call Centre Operators (ACCO) Pakistan.

Currently there are 70 call centres operating in the country and still there is so much business available internationally, that even if 100 call centres each of 100 seats are working in Pakistan, still there will be more business coming in, he said while talking to Daily Times here on Friday.

Butt said, despite supporting this industry the government has never taken serious steps to promote this industry, which can bring huge investment in the country and could help to an instinct control unemployment, which is rapidly increasing every year.

For any international call centre operations, the nerve is telecom link and in Pakistan the weakest support one has is the telecom link and the cost of the utility is so high that the more you use the more you pay. The process of import is very cumbersome and expensive, he added.

Visa constraints on international employees and investors; security issues; a very heavy bureaucratic approach towards the industry; lack of mass awareness of this industry by government and private media; no training subsidisation by government; lack of IT- enabled infrastructure are some of the problems.

this only shows the potential in our country if only the law and order situation normalises.

The biggest hurdles are Visa constraints and security issues. But government has taken serious steps for the call centre personnel training and in Karachi the business is growing up.

Actually Pakistani market was more focused on software project development and now the focus is shifted towards software product development but in my opinion ITES (IT enabled services) is the best approach for revenue generation because product development requires more time to generate money and lot of risk is also involved.

Yesterday the Internet bandwidth rates have been decreased considerably.

 

[salman nedian]

Pakistan among top countries for offshore outsourcing: Gartner

ISLAMABAD: As a result of the policy initiatives taken by the government to position the country as an offshore destination of choice, Pakistan has become a major player in the global Information Technology (IT) industry.

Gartner, the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company has placed Pakistan amongst the top countries of the world in terms of suitability for offshore outsourcing. Pakistan has been recognized by the global community as ‘Market Leaders and Challengers’ and has been placed in the First Category countries in 2007. Previously, in 2006 Pakistan was placed in the Third Category countries.

Gartner, in its recent report ‘Analysis of Pakistan as an Offshore Service Location’ said the major factor behind the progressing status of Pakistan is the lower salaries and better infrastructure advantages than other offshore destinations. “The salaries of IT professionals in Pakistan are approximately 30% lower than those in India, while telecommunication costs are also lower as compared to any other offshore locations, which make Pakistan an attractive outsourcing destination.”

Based on a total of ten criterion, including language, government support, labour pool, infrastructure, education system, cost, political and economic environment, cultural compatibility, global and legal maturity, data and intellectual property security and privacy, Gartner rated Pakistan as ‘very good’ in cost, ‘good’ in language and ‘fair’ in most of the areas despite the prevailing political environment.

According to Gartner research report, government of Pakistan has devised a comprehensive national IT policy, designed to encourage the private sector. In order to drive development, Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) plans to construct new IT parks in major cities while 750,000 square feet of space in PSEB-designated parks has already been leased to IT companies.

“The government is doing a great job of initiating activities in positioning Pakistan as an offshore location, however, it needs to take concrete steps to improve its brand image as an offshore destination,” the report adds.

It may be mentioned here that a number of Pakistani IT companies have developed world class software in areas such as car leasing, enterprise application integration, mortgage lien processing, stock market order management, mobile convergence, data and web content management for some of the top most corporations of the world. staff report

Source:Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan

 

[Malang]

Pakistan's global trade is 50bn$ already (30bil imports, 20bil exports).. sorry my bad does the post mean 50bil$ of IT trade..

 

[dotaplayer]

Pakistan's global trade is 50bn$ already (30bil imports, 20bil exports).. sorry my bad does the post mean 50bil$ of IT trade..

I think they are thnkin 50 billion $ after some years!!


Pakistan has been doing good in IT/ITES .i think the IT growth is about 40-50% !!

Total hardware+Softare (domestic consumption hardware 1billion $+ .6billion $ software consumption+1.4 billion $ export hardware+sftware)for 2007 july is about 3 billion $

it will grow to 11 billion $(including 4 billion $ exports+2.5bilion $ software consumtion+4.5 billion $ hardware consumption)...
!!

it can touch 50 billion(10 billion $ hardware consumption+8 billion $ sofwtare consumption+32 billion $ software exports) by 2020!!

This is a kind of ambitious target but achievable!!




Requirement?

1)for every 1 billion $ export :

a)10000-15000 BPO staff
or

b)15000 programmers :if the work is a software development (like accenture/EDS/capegamani)


c)10000 programmers: if its a Good product company !!

Like NETSOL pakistan which is a product based company!!



i think BPO is the easiest way to achieve good money!!!



D)For 50 billion $ total ITES (export +internal cnsumption),pakistan will need atleast

20 laks people in software/BPO

at present there are about 1 lak in sofwtare develop/BPO/R&D

so pakistan needs to train 19 laks more in next 12 years to achieve the target!!!

 

[MOSABJA]

Training people is not a problem.


We just need industry.

Human resource is also coming from the reserve of 7 MILLION Pakistani expatriates.

some of whom are coming back to pakistan and many have bought the property after ISLAMOPHOBIA.