IT INDUSTRY OF PAKISTAN

Pakistan's government has realized in the past few years that to get a boom in the economy is by improving and training the youth of the country in the Information Technology (IT) sector. The government has taken big steps and created lots of institutes for training youth in the IT sector. With these steps in the last four years, Pakistan's IT exports have increased to $5 billion which were approximately about $3 billion in 2016-2017 and is expected to increase up to $6 billion in a coming couple of years.

Youth can play an important role in the development of an economy. Just like the Chinese Government realized and didn't waste a bit and started training the youth, which resulted in a tremendous increase in the economy and is continuing to do so. Pakistan's Government is also following the same footsteps and has started to see the results which are continuing to raise the economic status of Pakistan.   Trade fairs and exhibitions have promoted Pakistan as a feasible destination for outsourcing. Pakistan's IT sector has achieved significant milestones and has participated in 11 international trade fairs along with 65 IT companies.  The IT industry has become the world's largest and most reputable entities among its regular clients and has never disappointed them. Due to this Amazon and large IT sectors are expecting huge in the startup world of Pakistan as evidenced by the huge number of sponsors. After agriculture, the IT industry has become the second most export industry in Pakistan.

Pakistan’s IT industry has potentially come a long way and is still developing to grow with a high success rate. Today IT stands as Pakistan's fastest-growing export sector. From less than $20 million in total IT earnings in 2000, Pakistan’s annual IT exports have crossed the $5 billion thresholds with an annual growth rate between 30 and 40 percent.                Pakistan has the third-largest army of freelancers on freelancers.com; its workforce is the fifth-most on upwork.com and is showing great response on fiver.com too. The IT industry is regarded as one of the most successful sectors of Pakistan economically, even during the financial crisis.                 On the request of  Professor Atta-ur-Rahman, a nationwide program was initiated by Intel in March 2002 in Pakistan to train teachers in the IT sector, which resulted in the training of about 220,000 teachers all across 70 different districts at no cost to the government. After that, the government took the next step and had given incentives to the IT investors in the country during the last decade which resulted in the development of the IT sector.

The World Economic Forum, assessing the development of Information and Communication Technology in the country has ranked Pakistan at 111th among 144 countries in the Global IT developing country's report of 2014. The period from 2013 to 2018 witnessed a landmark revolution in the sector after the launch of 3g and 4g technologies and IT industry are booming, and now 5G is expected to make much immense increase the IT exports even with improved and better quality and quantities.                            With an understanding that technology could be a big boom to local exports and can simultaneously provide Pakistan with much needed foreign exchange, Pakistan has invested aggressively both in information technology education.                     Pakistan's government has started promoting startups and has given them leniency in taxes, while also providing other services to them too to make sure to promote the young talent rising and support them and encourage others to join the IT industry. It has given three-year exemption from taxes to the new start-ups and has set up national incubation centers in Lahore, Islamabad, Peshawar, Karachi, and Quetta.             Another Initiative that has been taken by the President in the IT sector is the PIAIC (Presidential Initiative of Artificial Intelligence and Computing) which has the aim to reshape Pakistan by revolutionizing education, research, and business by training the youth and counting on them for the better of the economy of Pakistan. The aim of this initiative is to make Pakistan a global hub for Artificial Intelligence, data science, cloud-native computing, edge computing, blockchain, augmented reality and the internet of things.    

Pakistan’s exports increased due to the PSEB efforts of organizing participation in International expos and fairs along with IT companies. PSEB (Punjab School Education Board) in partnership with National ICT R&D Fund (IGNITE) has placed 1700 plus IT graduates as interns in the various IT companies and banks and more than 60 percent of interns had a job offer from their respective companies, rest area have started their own start-up companies which made great signs of progress.            Pakistan’s first-ever IT Company to be listed on NASDAQ in 1999 is NETSOL. NETSOL provides high-quality software products and services to leasing and asset finance companies in more than 30 countries.           Pakistan is emerging as a preferred source of software developers, programmers, designers, and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) specialists and ranked as the third most financially attractive location in the world for offshore services, as said by a diplomat.              There are more than 6,000 IT (information technology) & allied companies currently registered in Pakistan, while new ones are coming gradually.