IT exports will surge to $15 billion: minister

Haque stresses need for faster digitisation, supporting freelancers

ISLAMABAD:

Minister of Information Technology Syed Aminul Haque has expressed the determination to push Pakistan’s IT exports to $15 billion from the existing $2.6 billion over the next few years, indicating increased focus on an area where the country has lagged far behind competitors.

Speaking at a news conference on Tuesday, the minister announced that investments in the IT sector would be jacked up to $10 billion. At present, the ministry is paying attention to enhancing connectivity, skills development and
capital inflows.

With the military and political leadership on the same page, the focus of the coalition government was on strengthening the economy, improving job opportunities, increasing remittances and promoting ease of doing business, he underlined.

“Projects worth Rs77 billion to improve cyber optic cable networks and 3G and 4G facilities, especially in far-off areas, are underway, which will be completed by December 2023,” he revealed.

Apart from that, 3.3 million freelancers have been imparted skills training to give a big push to IT exports.

Haque, however, was of the view that bureaucratic mindset was restricting the rapid development of digitisation. “They still believe that only tangible items like potatoes and tomatoes can be traded and don’t understand the importance of online services such as call centres and remittances from freelancers.”

He underlined that the IT ministry took the Covid era as an opportunity to press ahead with digitisation, set several targets and were moving towards them at a fast pace. These include ‘smartphone for all’ and ‘connectivity for all’.

Elaborating, Haque said that the price of a good-quality smartphone dropped to around Rs20,000 to Rs30,000 as local manufacturing of mobile phones was being promoted.

As the number of smartphone users increases, the pressure will grow on internet service providers to expand their services.

To meet the target of expanding connectivity to remote areas, 83 projects worth Rs77.8 billion of the Universal Service Fund (USF) will be completed by December 2023.

The minister announced that the government was organising an international IT seminar on July 20 to boost growth of the industry. “It will be the source of investments and remittances; we have made plans to ramp up IT exports to $15 billion in the next few years.”

He highlighted that Digi Skills programmes of Ignite, an initiative that offers freelancing courses, trained around 3.3 million people in various courses and in 2022 Google trained 15,000 Pakistanis in its programmes.

“Now after negotiations with Google, it will train around 450,000 Pakistanis in 2024,” the
minister said.

On the occasion, P@SHA chairman stressed that many issues would be resolved with the creation of Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC) as it would comprise key figures from the government and armed forces.

He pointed out that one of the main problems faced by the IT industry was the inconsistency in tax policies, adding SIFC was a platform where the private sector could raise its concerns.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 19^th, 2023.

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