Business Process Outsourcing News and Information

India is shining in outsourcing, but why not Pakistan. I wonder. Pakistan is India’s neighbor. More or less culture, education, people etc are similar. As far as human resource is concerned, If Indians can be trained, Pakistanies also can be trained. I know many a Paksitani software engineers who are very successful in different parts of the world. But it seems more than quality of human resource, it’s that non-industry-friendly image that is doing Pakistan more harm.

Nadeem Ilahi Managing Director and Country Head-Pakistan TRG (The Resource Group) in an exclusive interview with The News said Pakistan has potential in call centre and business process outsource (BPO) industry like any other country.

He said there are three important factors in this business, labour and cost, telecom, and infrastructure. Pakistan is fairly well placed as far as these three components are concern. India is the biggest BPO and call centre industry followed by Philippines. Telecom rates are cheaper in India and Philippines as compared to Pakistan but other costs particularly labour cost in India is twice as high as compared to Pakistan. 

“USA buys 80 per cent of global BPO services but the customers are not willing to come to Pakistan due to the US State Department’s travel advisories against Pakistan,” Nadeem said. The BPO business needs people to people contact. Customers’ trainers need to come and train the BPO and call centre employees before they start their campaign. However, he said, in presence of travel advisories the customers’ trainers cannot come to Pakistan to train the workers. Therefore they take their business somewhere else. Source

It seems the problem is stemming from US. 

Note: It's difficult to get an image from Pakistan without blood shed and terrorism. This pic is an artist's impression.

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