Google establishes liaison office in country

ISLAMABAD: Google has registered itself with the Security Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) and established its liaison office in the country. The Google office will be located in Karachi. Four team members of Google Asia Pacific had already reached Pakistan and head of policy would arrive on Sunday. The Google team would meet Minister for IT and Telecom on Monday. 

Now Google’s high-powered delegation from Singapore is scheduled to visit Pakistan on December 11 for making all necessary arrangements for ensuring smooth functioning of its office from next week.

This scribe contacted Google’s spokesperson and got the reply: “We recently opened a liaison office in Pakistan to explore business opportunities, better market our products and service locally and support the country’s fast-growing tech ecosystem.”

In the SECP, Google got the registration certificate under Section 435 of the Companies Act 2017, which states that Google Asia Pacific Pte Ltd Company incorporated in Singapore has complied with all the requirements under Section 435 of the Companies Act 2017 (XIX of 2017) for establishing a liaison office in Pakistan. The documents provided by Google Asia Pacific Pte Ltd are registered under the Companies Act 2017.

The Minister for Information Technology & Telecom, Syed Amin Ul Haq, stated that Google’s high-powered team would be visiting Pakistan next week for ensuring smooth functioning of its office here in the country. He said that all social media platforms would be coming to Pakistan as Tiktok would also be coming to Pakistan to establish its office. He said the government was also inviting Meta to come to Pakistan and the government had received encouraging responses from all platforms.

With the help of establishing liaison offices in Pakistan through social media platforms, it would help secure the data of Pakistani customers as the government would encourage them to establish their data centers here in this country.

The official sources said that the inconsistency and unpredictability of policies created major stumbling blocks in the way of establishing offices by social media platforms in Pakistan.

The recent fiasco of blocking Direct Carrier Billing (DCBs) has created an unwarranted situation, which was resolved after intervention from the Ministry of Finance. Although, the DCB mechanism is not yet restored in Pakistan through downloading of purchased applications, authorities say that it would be done in the next few days.

However, the sources said that it would only be restored when the outstanding amount of Google would be repaid by the banks after getting permission from the State Bank of Pakistan. There are very active customers who use purchased applications from Google and other platforms, so the government preferred to avoid their wrath and decided to take steps for restoring the DCB mechanism.