Minister for Information Technology (IT), Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari on Tuesday said that government was using all its resources to create the infrastructure needed to expedite growth in Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector so that the industry could concentrate on marketing their services abroad.
"There is immense growth potential exists of growth in this field, the progress of the sector has not been really up to the mark and it is high time for the BPO industry to focus on various sub-sectors such as accounting, outsourcing and insurance claim processing", he said in a meeting with the representatives of IT-enabled services companies.
The meeting was organised by the Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) to identify the issues faced by the BPO industry and to brainstorm on possible solutions.
Over 15-Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) participated in the meeting, representing companies across the BPO spectrum from throughout the country.
Business Process Outsourcing or BPO, is a term that is used to explain how companies that would like to concentrate on their core business often engage other companies to carry out their back end functions for them.
Such back end functions include customer support through call centres, accounting, order processing, insurance claim processing, procurement and other logistic functions.
Medical record billing, transcriptions and call centres are also considered to be a part of the BPO sector, and nearly 1,500 individuals are employed in providing such services to customers abroad.
The market is growing rapidly, with expected annual growth rates in excess of 100 percent for the next few years.
The participants were unanimous in their opinion that the BPO sector offers the most potential for Pakistan to generate jobs and earn foreign exchange in the shortest possible time.
The minister asked the country's IT companies to "identify niche areas within the BPO sector if they are to be able to compete in any meaningful fashion at the global level."
Awais Leghari, in response to a question about the strong signalled that politicians in the West were striving to keep such jobs within Europe or the US. Just like the earlier wave of manufacturing jobs moving from the US to the Far East, the current wave of services jobs moving to lower income countries was a reality.
They urged the government to focus attention on travel advisories against Pakistan, and an increasing domestic demand for outsourcing.
Shahid Azim a Harvard-educated professional who runs a major call centre in Islamabad, said his company was desperate to hire people, but in spite of offering high salaries and a very comfortable work environment, the quality of the applications being received was not up to the mark.
Naseer Lone of TRG which is the largest offshore control led call centre company in the world, said his company had expanded rapidly by opening new offices in Karachi to cater the growing demand.
Dr Amir Matin, Managing Director PSEB, said board was striving to improve the quality of the manpower available in the country, and had already launched projects to improve the quality of the management of IT-enabled service companies.
"At the same time, we realise that we need to initiate projects to train employees, improve infrastructure and market these services in niche areas," he added.
Minister of State, Ali Asjad Malhi who also attended the meeting, said, "We have initiated a project to highlight country's image on international electronic media and are currently in the process of weighing our options vis-à-vis various channels."
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