Pakistan up and coming on the Outsourcing horizon

Pakistani Prime Minister has put out a call to Western companies to outsource jobs to Pakistan. He urged neighbors in the business forefront to transform it into a manufacturing good whose result, cheap goods would benefit a greater part of the community.

In a London interview with The Sunday Times’ John Waples, the Prime Minister was quoted by the leading British newspaper as such,

“Pakistan has a stable political environment, and is a better place for western companies to outsource than India or China”

The Sunday Times further quotes Aziz,

“Use Pakistan as a regional hub for manufacturing and then export, because the location is unique. The challenge now is one of implementation and making things work better. The Pakistan of today and tomorrow is not the Pakistan of yesterday”

Aziz goes on to say,

“When the world was taking off in the 1980s and 1990s, we were busy with internal politics. This did not provide the continuity that a developing country needs”

The report also shows the Pakistani government in its full scale attempts at persuading western businesses to invest in the country and maximize the land’s offering with its natural resources and cheap labor.

2005 predictions for Pakistan are looking up, what with exports set to hit $14 billion and a GDP growth seen to climb from 6.7% to 7.5% - predicted by no less than President Pervez Musharraf himself. Last Wednesday saw him sharing the good news with the delegates present at the Expo 2005: some 700-strong foreign companies operating in Pakistan were reeling in double digit returns – some even making as much as 50%. He places the hourly labor rate side-by-side: an inviting $0.37 in Pakistan as compared to India’s $0.58 and China’s $0.67.

The newspaper goes on to share the 100% annual growth rate of foreign investments in Pakistan, with US and Britain leading the winning race. Even the Karachi stock exchange turned in an excellent performance in the boardroom for 2003 – with a further 50% increase for 2004.

The report simply gives an overview of the influx of foreign investments into Pakistan. Manchester-based Drillcorer has migrated its drills production unit to Pakistan and Honda is following suit with its two motorcycle factories. All these add up to the growth in Pakistan’s manufacturing sector, pegged at more than 15% a year.

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IT security rides offshore outsourcing wave

U.S. companies that outsource their IT security functions dramatically contributed to the volume of business sent overseas this year, according to a new survey.

The survey, released Thursday by the Computer Security Institute and the FBI, revealed dramatic changes in 2006 in the volume of offshore IT security work. Of the U.S. companies that indicated they farm out their security functions, the amount of work sent overseas in some cases doubled year over year.

Companies with an average revenue of less than $10 million outsourced 8 percent of their security functions overseas this year, compared with 4 percent last year, according to respondents. Midsize companies of $100 million to $1 billion in revenue also nearly doubled the work they sent offshore, from 7 percent last year to 13 percent this year.

Large corporations with more than $1 billion saw the biggest increase in outsourcing, sending 15 percent of their security functions offshore, up from 9 percent last year, according to the survey.

Although the volume of security functions sent overseas jumped significantly, the number of U.S. companies that use outsourcing has remained fairly stable. This year, 39 percent of the companies surveyed indicated they farm out varying degrees of their security work, compared with 37 percent last year.

In a preview of the survey last month, Robert Richardson, editorial director at the CSI, also noted that there was a decline in financial losses due to cybercrime in 2006 and fewer security incidents than in previous years.

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