In order to effectively promote IT & IT-enabled Services (ITeS) exports, the Pakistani IT industry has formed partnerships with the 16 economies ICT alliance of the Asia-Pacific Information & Communication Technologies Alliance (APICTA), according to Muhammad Zohaib Khan, Chairman of the Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@SHA).
Since the IT & ITeS industry’s export remittances decreased by 0.5 percent to $1.94 billion in Q1 – Q3 FY23, as opposed to the 47 percent average growth IT & ITeS posted for 2 consecutive years, i.e. FY21 and FY22, the chairman claimed that the stagnation in IT exports has caused profound concerns & apprehensions in the IT industry.
At the 79th Executive Committee meeting of APICTA in Perth, Australia, where he was the leader of the Pakistani delegation that also included Jamil Goheer and Dr. Shoab Khan, members of the P@SHA CEC, the top P@SHA executive was speaking.
The APICTA nations, whose combined GDP exceeds $30 trillion, provide potential sizable markets for Pakistan’s export of information technology to the Asia-Pacific region and other allies like China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, and Japan, among others.
“One can well imagine what it can mean to a developing country like Pakistan with a population of 230.1 million and 64% under the age of 35,” he said. “A region & its IT alliance has a combined GDP of $30 trillion.”
According to Khan, the FBR, SBP, SECP, TDAP, and PSEB should collaborate, and P@SHA is ready to support them in harmonising their policies on foreign exchange, taxation, corporate laws, exports, and investments with global best practises.
Pakistani IT exports are anticipated to be in the $2.5 to $2.6 billion range this year; they could easily increase to the psychological mark of $5 billion in a matter of two years, he added, provided that government institutions change their policies to be more business-friendly and concentrate on the ease of doing business (EODB) criteria, on which Pakistan ranks abhorrently low at number 108.
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