According to the officials concerned, consultation process is almost complete and the draft policy would be given final shape soon. It is expected that the draft policy would be submitted to the Economic Co-ordination Committee (ECC) for its approval next month, official added. However, stakeholders have termed the export target of $6 billion by 2020 as unrealistic while keeping in view the ground realities.
Talking to Business Recorder Syed Ahmad CEO of DPL Software Company said government claims that IT exports are about $2.5 billion, however State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) data reflects only $500 million. There is no study to measure the exact export figure, he added. Syed Ahmad further said that exports of formal IT industry are ranging from $500-600 million and non-formal industry ie freelance is around one billion dollars. However it is not easy to regulate or bind the freelancers to get actual figures. IT exporter said that government needs to give incentives to the sector, especially to the freelancers for increasing exports.
Some of the key features of the draft National IT Policy are sectoral digitization, big data, data analytics, entrepreneurship, Internet of Things (IoT), e-commerce, e-agriculture, software export. According to the draft policy, there has been better growth in recent years in overall IT industry in the country with IT firms earning nearly $560 million, mainly in software development and service outsourcing. However, it has been estimated that around 75 percent of earnings are held overseas to finance the cost of foreign offices and international marketing making the real figure in excess of $2.2 billion. IT exports have witnessed 41 percent increase during last one year.
The draft policy states that Pakistan has more than 2000 IT companies and call centers and the number is increasing every year. Pakistan has more than 300,000 English-speaking IT professionals with expertise in latest IT products and technologies. More than 20,000 IT graduates and engineers are being produced every year. Pakistan has 14 Software Technology Parks at present with an area of one million square feet with more being planned for future. Freelancing revenue is another $90-100 million per year, domestic revenue is roughly around Rs 30 billion or $300 million and the market of cellular mobile companies is huge with total imports of Rs 73.224 billion for the fiscal year 2014-15. All these reflect a promising IT landscape in Pakistan.
The policy is targeting to enhance exports of software and IT/IT enabled services to create jobs and contribute towards government's efforts to increase overall exports and IT remittances. The policy mainly concentrates on emerging areas of mobile applications, responsive web applications, and animation. It further focusing on moving up the global IT value chain while it is also exploring new areas where low end business process outsourcing jobs can be created. The policy envisages attracting multinational global companies to utilise Pakistani manpower for back end services by providing appropriate incentives in a transparent manner, utilise the Pakistani Diaspora in the US and European markets to plug young entrepreneurs into the global IT value chain.
The policy is aimed at providing enabling environment for companies to set up venture capital and other financing mechanisms to start up companies. The Ministry spokesperson said that given the growing trends of information technology, it has become imperative to reformulate the national IT policy to take into account the transformative fundamentals of technology and its eco-system centered on digitization.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2017