Staff Reporter
Islamabad
Advisor to the Prime Minister on Commerce and Investment, Abdul Razak Dawood on Tuesday said technological advances have opened up many possibilities for trade in services across borders in many sectors.
He said this while addressing a consultative meeting on service exports and examined the state of service trade of Pakistan and steps taken to expand this trade, here in the Ministry of Commerce, said a press release.
He said now after decades, the British American Tobacco (BAT) has decided to move its business-shared services (BSS) operations from Malaysia to Pakistan.
Razak Dawood said this is an indication that Pakistan is now being considered as a cost effective location for activities like back office services, business process outsourcing (BPO), call centres, etcetera.
This is a major development and it is hoped that other multinationals will follow suit, he added.
He said after Deutsche Bank withdrew its BPO operations from Pakistan, no major multinational company considered moving its BPO operations to Pakistan.
He informed that this was especially true for back office services, which are now called BPO of which the BSS are a specialised form. These include customer support, sales and marketing support, bookkeeping, payroll management, fee collection, transcription, he said.
The advisor reiterated the importance of these services and informed the participants that Pakistan Tobacco Company (PTC), a subsidiary of BAT, had been competing for BAT’s global business services (GBS) to be setup in Pakistan.
He informed that earlier this year, he had held a meeting with the management of BAT, over video link, in order to market Pakistan as a favourable destination for the shared services.
