Pakistan to promote cross-border e-commerce with SCO countries: MoU
In a milestone move to promote collaboration among Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) member states in the digital economy, Pakistan signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Building a Cross-border Ecommerce Platform with nine trade organisations of SCO member states.
The signing ceremony held at the Digital Commerce Conference of the 2021 China-SCO Forum on the Digital Economy Industry in China's tech powerhouse of Chongqing. Four areas of cooperation in cross-border e-commerce are highlighted in the MoU.
According to the MoU, online and offline conferences will be held to help build e-commerce platforms for international trade facilitation, digital technology exchanges and experience sharing.
Cooperation will also cover joint e-commerce talent training. The organisations will engage colleges and universities, professional training institutions, ecommerce enterprises and industry associations in cultivating e-commerce talents, CEN reported.
The MoU said that the organisations will draw on ecommerce to promote the production and distribution of competitive products among SCO countries and to facilitate production and marketing by providing enterprises with overseas public warehouse, logistics, payment and other services and support to reach cooperation.
The organisations will also encourage and guide enterprises to participate in and share e-commerce developments in international exhibitions and forums on the digital economy and draw on such platforms to create business opportunities for enterprises.
Themed "Joint e-commerce cooperation for a shared future, the Digital Commerce Conference discusses the new trends in international e-commerce and is joined by officials of SCO member states including Pakistan, and ambassadors of SCO countries in China, e-commerce enterprises and experts.
Pakistan's premier conglomerate, Engro Corporation announces to increase its total equity investment in telecom infrastructure vertical to Rs 21.5 billion.
Engro has also formed a dedicated platform for connectivity and telecom infrastructure related initiatives by the name of Engro Connect (Pvt.) Limited (EConnect), said Engro statement on Wednesday.
E-Connect is a wholly owned subsidiary of Engro and will hold complete ownership of Engro Enfrashare (Pvt.) Limited (Enfrashare), which is now Pakistan's largest independent telecom tower company in terms of operationalized and active towers.
The total equity injection of Rs 21.5 billion in EConnect will be mainly utilized to expand the Build-toSuite (BTS) tower business under Enfrashare including but not limited to provision of efficient energy solutions, modernization of operations, installation of state-of-the-art network monitoring solutions and exploration of other investment avenues within the connectivity value chain.
Today, Enfrashare has over 1,800 operational sites with a current tenant base of 1,963 tenants and has framework agreements in place with all 4 Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) in the country. Engro envisages to make Enfrashare a 5,000 BTS tower company by the year 2025.
While recent discussing this announcement,
President and Chief Executive Officer of Engro Corporation, Ghias Khan said, " We believe that robust connectivity initiatives and best-in-class telecom infrastructure are need of the hour for the country as the world is now moving swiftly towards digitalization and infrastructure sharing."
Being focused on Engro's purpose of solving some of Pakistan's most pressing issues, the management would utilize the corporation's considerable balance sheet and quality human capital to support our MNOs in their passive infrastructure requirements while creating an ecosystem for the deployment of next generation networks.
A promising growth story is seen for the telecom sector in the country with the 3G / 4G subscriber base expanding beyond 100 million and registering an annual growth of 28%, coupled with exponential data growth that has more than doubled from fiscal year 2018 to fiscal year 2020.
With such strong development on the horizon, Enfrashare and its tower infrastructure will be a critical enabler for the MNOs to expand their networks while ensuring quality of services.