Pakistan eyes $100 million voice service exports in 2015

KARACHI: Government plans to increase voice service exports to $100 million in the current 2014/15 fiscal year, said a top government official on Saturday – an apparent indication that the laggard call centres industry is gaining traction.
“We are encouraging call centres to report their export revenue to the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) under a special code for IT export,” said Asim Shahryar Husain, managing director at Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB).
Hussain told The News that call centres were used to report their export revenue as home remittances.
“Their overseas earning is not recorded as IT exports revenue,” he said.
The SBP reported $370 million worth of IT and call centres exports during the last fiscal year.
With over 11 percent share in total IT exports, call centres fetched only $39 million in 2013/14.
According to the Pakistan Software Export Board, this revenue is underestimated as call centres are not reporting their exports revenue under ‘9102’ State Bank of Pakistan code.
Business process outsourcing (BPO) industry is fed on the requirement of businesses to outsource some tasks to the third party.
Foreign organisations delegate the call handling operation to call centres in emerging economies, including South Asia, where they gain wage arbitrage advantage.
The Pakistan Software Export Board chief counted on multiple other reasons for an enhanced exports revenue from call centres.
“Numbers of call centres are increasing from the present tally of over 500,” Hussain said.
“We are giving various incentives, including zero taxation and provision of bandwidth on subsidised rate, to start a call handling operation.”
However, industry leaders considered the export target overambitious.
“There is no apparent reason behind the optimism,” said Ayub Butt, chief executive officer at ZRG International, dealing in call handling software.
Butt, however, said there is a surge in demand from Middle East.
“Otherwise, sales of call centres industry in the country are driven by promotional campaigns of mobile phones and fast moving consumer goods,” he added. “There is a shortage of permanent foreign contracts.”
Explaining a reason, he said a UK client, for example, is reluctant to sign a contract with a local call centre as he fears disruptions in services due to weak infrastructure and power shutdown.
According to him, most of the businesses rely on outbound calls in an unstable call centres industry.
IT experts said the potential of industry in a country with growing English-speaking population can be explored by following the success stories in other countries of South Asia.
They said India, which is the world’s second biggest call centre hub with $7 billion annual revenue, could become a nearest and commercially viable partner of Pakistan.
A few years ago, Indian Business process outsourcing specialists visited Pakistan to transfer knowledge to local entrepreneurs.
“They wanted to transfer low-paid and low-skilled jobs and sub-contracts to Pakistan, while taking hold on specialised and technical voice services,” said an expert privy to the development.
“Besides, it was not easy to keep up partnership with Indian businessmen as there were visa-related and fund transfer issues and other non-tariff barriers,” he added.
Nonetheless, Hussain is sure to grab a big chunk from the call handling business coming in the region from western countries.
“Exports of IT/ITes have already jumped 30 percent since July last,” he said. “Some of the local call centres are handling calls of top international companies, like AT&T.”