Tech progress opens new avenues

PM aide appreciates MNC’s plan to start BSS operations in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD:

Technological advancement has opened up many possibilities of trade in services across borders in many sectors, said Adviser to Prime Minister on Commerce and Investment Abdul Razak Dawood.

Speaking at a consultative meeting on services exports at the Ministry of Commerce on Tuesday, the adviser examined the state of Pakistan’s services trade as well as steps taken to expand it.

“After decades, the British American Tobacco (BAT) has decided to move its business-shared services (BSS) operations from Malaysia to Pakistan,” he said. “This is an indication that Pakistan is being considered as a cost-effective location for activities like back office services, business process outsourcing (BPO), call centres and others.”

He termed it a major development and voiced hope that other multinational companies would follow suit. After Deutsche Bank withdrew its BPO operations from Pakistan, no major multinational company had considered moving its BPO operations to the country, he pointed out.

According to the adviser, this is especially true for back office services, which are now called BPO and BSS are a specialised form of it.

Elaborating, he said such services included customer support, sales and marketing support, bookkeeping, payroll management, fee collection and transcription.

The adviser underlined the importance of these services and informed meeting participants that Pakistan Tobacco Company (PTC), a subsidiary of BAT, had been striving to get BAT’s global business services (GBS) office established in Pakistan. He recalled that earlier this year he held a meeting with the management of BAT to portray Pakistan as a favourable destination for shared services. He stressed that PTC had succeeded in accomplishing the task and announced BAT’s plan to set up its BSS organisation hub - BAT GBS for Asia-Pacific and Middle East Region - in Pakistan.

Dawood was of the view that it had been a rigorous process which spanned several months during which Pakistan was evaluated by the company alongside India and Bangladesh for a final decision regarding where to set up its office.

“The decision was taken after evaluating countries on key factors like existing commercial presence of the company, country sustainability and availability of workforce and talent,” he said.

Dawood lauded BAT’s decision and termed it a matter of great pride for Pakistan.

He said that the move would add Pakistan to the list of countries such as Malaysia, Romania, Costa Rica and others where the tobacco producer operated its services hubs for servicing 180 entities across the globe for finance, human resources, information technology and other functions.

He was of the view that the move would create thousands of jobs over the next five years and it would also serve as a talent incubator and would create global career prospects for Pakistani youth.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 23^rd, 2020.

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