E-commerce to help promote Pakistani products

["Irfan Khan" <khania2@super.net.pk>]

From: "SDNP Info" <info@isb.sdnpk.org>
To: "Comp-list" <comp-list@isb.sdnpk.org>
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 16:35:25 +0500

E-commerce to help promote Pakistani products
The News, 19/9/2002
http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/sep2002-daily/19-09-
2002/business/b12.htm

ISLAMABAD: Minister for Science and Technology Dr Atta-ur-Rehman on 
Thursday said electronic commerce would have a great economic impact 
and would allow the country to promote its products.  

He was addressing a two-day conference on "E-commerce & Development 
in Pakistan" organised by the IT & Telecom Division in collaboration 
with UNDP, UNCTAD and MPL Islamabad. The minister said the trading of 
products could now take place legally and safely as necessary laws to 
protect the interests of both buyers and sellers in the process of 
electronic sales and purchases had been put in place through an 
ordinance.  

He said on the part of government, the Electronic Transaction 
Ordinance was a great achievement, which was a prerequisite for e-
commerce growth in the country. He said three major companies - Dell, 
Cisco and Intel - had sales through electronic means of over US$100 
million per day. It had been estimated that about 10 per cent of all 
business-to-business transactions would be carried out electronically 
by the year 2004, he added.  

"There will be tremendous savings by using e-commerce as the cost of 
transactions is greatly reduced electronically," he said. Dr Atta 
said the world IT market was worth about $560 billion and out of this 
$400 billion were for IT-enabled services such as call centres, 
transcription service, medical transcription, external audit, etc.  

Talking about the achievements of the government in information 
technology, he said a training programme for school teachers in IT 
had been started to train 25,000 teachers. "There is also a 
remarkable achievement in infrastructure enhancement as internet has 
been expanded from 29 cities to 852 cities with the active 
participation of Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL)."  


The Internet bandwidth rates had been slashed from US$86,000 per 
month to $3,800 while Internet bandwidth capacity availability had 
been increased, he added. He further informed that a number of 
programmes for training, creation of awareness and exchange of 
commercial documents were also under way for the promotion of the 
sector.  

The minister said the required progress had not been made in the 
banking network and Internet banking connectivity. "The banks have 
been very slow and we are not going to have any genuine e-commerce in 
Pakistan unless our banks could get their act right. We plan to start 
publishing e-readiness ratings of the banks in the near future," he 
added.  

He said a survey had been conducted last month in this regard and 
results were being compiled. "We are also advising the clients to 
switch to those banks which have better e-readiness rating," Atta 
said.  

In his welcome address, Secretary IT & Telecom Division Ashfaq 
Mahmood said the purpose of the conference was to share experiences 
and knowledge with local and foreign experts, learn lessons and 
devise a strategy to benefit from opportunities offered by e-commerce 
for development and poverty reduction.  

He said the telecommunications sector was being deregulated and from 
January 1, 2003, when the monopoly of Pakistan Telecommunication 
Company Ltd would come to an end, a large number of players in the 
private sector were expected to provide great impetus to the 
development of infrastructure.