Pakistan IT ambassador closing up shop
PAKISTAN’S TECHNOLOGY BUSINESS Development Office near Silicon Valley is being shut down after less than six months of operation, the country’s IT envoy there confirmed Thursday. The office was set up in July in Los Altos, California, to help U.S. companies seeking IT services or products from Pakistan and for Pakistani companies that wanted to drum up business in the U.S., said Ambassador Toheed Ahmad, the outgoing consul general of Pakistan for IT development. It was to have been the first of several such offices around the world. Ahmad is now winding down the operation and will shut it down by the end of this month. He said Pakistan’s central government in Islamabad ordered the closure, but the decision probably was driven by economic woes and declining tax revenue in that country. Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S., Pakistan has lost $2 billion to $3 billion in exports overall, he estimated.
