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By APD writer Muhammad Sohail
Pakistan’s telecommunication, computer and information services exports increased by 18.5 percent to 517 million U.S. dollars during the first seven months of the current fiscal year (July 2019-June 2020), local media reported Tuesday morning.
According to the reports, the major chunk of that came under the software consultancy services as its exports increased by around 12 percent to around 159 million U.S. dollars during the said period.
Following the software consultancy, the country’s exports of computer software also rose by 8.17 percent to 129 million U.S. dollars against 119 million U.S. dollars during the same period in the last fiscal year.
Pakistan Software Houses Association Chairman Shahzad Shahid, by citing provisional figures for the first half of the current fiscal year, said, “IT and ITeS (information technology-enabled services) is a sector which has continued to show impressive growth in exports year on year.”
“Growth in the first half of the current fiscal year is 24.71pc which is almost eight times higher than the country’s overall exports during the same time last year,” he added.
Pakistan’s information communication technology (ICT) sector has more than 5,000 IT companies that are providing services in around 100 countries, and it is flourishing as more than 10,000 application developers, freelancers enter into the workforce each year.
“We believe that the IT sector can become a 10 billion U.S. dollar industry and it can create over a million new jobs within 5 years if the government makes growth-focused policies timely,” said the chairman.
However, he urged the country’s government to engage the local tech sector as it digitizes its various functions to meet the growth potential adding that building domestic capacity is a must for Pakistan to create jobs for its youth and to achieve its export targets.
(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)
