APBF foresees massive boost for IT industry

Expects infrastructure development along KKH to increase connectivity

LAHORE: All Pakistan Business Forum President Ibrahim Qureshi said on Monday that with foreign investment in the country, it is essential that all provinces get equal benefits, opportunities and budgets for strengthening their infrastructure and trade activities along with their information technology (IT) sectors.

While appreciating China’s robust investment plans and trans-national initiatives for boosting cross-border trade activities, Qureshi said that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) inspires new opportunities to set up projects that will boost the IT sector.

According to the current scheme, CPEC will include construction of cross-border optical fibre (OFC) system between China and Pakistan for international connectivity of voice/data traffic and provision of seamless GSM coverage along the Karakoram Highway (KKH) for the proposed Gwadar - Kashgar Economic Corridor in Gilgit Baltistan, a presser released by APBF stated.

“The CPEC initiative includes the building of roads, ports, dams, connecting cities, and serving those areas without coverage.  This will provide a much-needed improvement to the economy which will also bring benefits to the IT industry.

“Pakistan itself represents a major potential for people-centric mobile based applications and products which are fully prepared for the next level of development with a state-of-the-art connectivity structure with fixed and mobile networks that have a teledensity of more than 71% which is also increasing on a monthly basis,” the presser added. 

Published in The Express Tribune, March 27^th, 2018.

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