ISLAMABAD:
Pakistan is experiencing a silent revolution in the IT industry.
Various incentives are being granted to the sector including the establishment of 15 software technology parks, zero income tax on IT and IT-enabled services export, zero income tax on Pakistan Software Export Board-registered IT startups and tax holidays for venture capital firms till 2024.
IT startups also remain on the radar of global investors and their exports continue to surge.
“The primary reason is that the requirement of ICT services in the global market has grown exponentially due to the pandemic and our rival countries were impacted due to Covid-19, so we got the overflow,” said Infotech Chairman Naseer Akhtar.
Tkxel Innovation and Technology Director Haseeb Khan believes that customers are attracted to Pakistani enterprises because of their service quality.
“For example, if you talk about web application development, we have expertise in .Net, Java, Python, Ruby on Rails and others,” he said. “Besides this, our organisation is a CMMI level-3 certified company, and we rank among top 1-2% of the global software companies in various authentic platforms.”
Facing the opportunities and challenges of the international market, Pakistan keeps finding ways to improve the capacity and seize the chance.
“Some services are advanced like artificial intelligence, blockchain, machine learning and internet of things and they are on top of the pyramid,” said Pakistan Software Houses Association Central Executive Committee member Badar Khushnood.
He believed that the upgrade of IT services was a must for Pakistan.
“We have every kind of service but most of them are at the bottom of the pyramid hence we need to bring ourselves higher to gain more export potential.”
Blockchain
According to interviews with senior executives of IT companies in Pakistan, one advanced technology that they mentioned the most was blockchain.
To talk about how Pakistan got started in this area, CEN consulted Jian Peng, Pakistan’s Honorary Investment Counsellor in China.
“The front-end research and development of blockchain technology requires huge costs, which would be too big an investment for one or several IT companies,” Jian said. “I suggest applying blockchain technology in public services as a start.”
The counsellor said that it could be applied in the fields of public medical care and public education as well. In this way, a large part of the initial investment risk could be reduced and it could also quickly bring economic benefits.
Jian said that blockchain technology has been slowly introduced in government service, medical care, education and other fields in China. THE ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED ON THE CHINA ECONOMIC NET
Published in The Express Tribune, January 29th, 2022.
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