KARACHI: In a major development, American tech giant Google opened its liaison office in Pakistan after obtaining a registration certificate from the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP), officials confirmed on Friday.

Google was registered in Pakistan on November 08, 2022 with the SECP under the Companies Act 2017 after the due formalities for setting up a liaison office in Pakistan were completed.

“Yes, (Google) is registered as foreign company,” Muhammad Sajid Gondal, a spokesperson of the SECP, told Arab News on Friday.

Google also confirmed that it has opened a liaison office in Pakistan to explore business opportunities, promote products, provide technical assistance, and to support the South Asian country’s growing tech ecosystem.

“We have recently opened a liaison office in Pakistan to explore business opportunities, better market our products and services locally and support the country’s fast growing tech ecosystem,” a Google spokesperson said in a written response to Arab News on Friday.

Last month Dr. Afnan Ullah Khan, a member of the Senate’s Committee on Information Technology and Telecommunication, had also disclosed that a Google team would be visiting Islamabad in December.

According to the lawmaker, a Google delegation would visit Pakistan on December 11 to start operations. He had also informed that Google would provide 15,000 scholarships to Pakistani citizens after it begins operations in the country.

In September, Google launched Career Certificates to offer flexible learning opportunities for Pakistanis to enable them to develop their knowledge and digital skills. The search engine giant also announced it would donate $500,000 to Pakistan in September 2022 for flood relief efforts.

Separately, in another major development, Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari announced that Pakistani content creators on Facebook can now monetize their content using the Facebook Stars feature.

“I’m very happy to report that as of today, Facebook or Meta’s Star monetization feature will be launching and which will mean that people who use Facebook or Instagram put their posts or videos up, now based on the stars they get, they can get actually earn money of the videos, the material they put up,” Bhutto-Zardari said in a video message.

The development comes a day after the minister visited the Meta Asia-Pacific headquarters in Singapore. Meta, a multinational technology conglomerate, owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp platforms.