Prime Minister Imran Khan directed to formulate a comprehensive road-map for the development of the information technology (IT) sector in the country within a week.
The key areas include the launch of 5G, connecting mobile phone towers through fiberization in big cities and defining timelines of other important matters to remove impediments in the promotion of the IT sector.
The prime minister issued the directive while chairing a meeting on promotion of information technology, which was attended by Commerce Advisor Abdul Razak Dawood, PM’s Special Assistant Dr. Firdous Ashiq Awan, Co-chairman Prime Minister Task Force for IT and Telecom Dr. Ata ur Rehman, and secretaries of information technology, commerce, cabinet, and finance divisions.
Prime Minister Imran Khan said the country’s future is linked with information technology and the government is prioritizing the promotion of the sector by providing incentives to the skilled youth.
He said the country’s youth have immense talent and expertise in IT and promoting the sector will create millions of jobs.
Secretary Information Technology Shoaib Siddiqi briefed the Prime Minister about giving incentives to the skilled professional youth and freelancers, increasing exports of the IT sector and tax incentives, easy loans to the youth, facilitation of foreign remittance process for freelancers and visa-related matters.
He said that a comprehensive plan has been chalked out for the promotion of the IT sector, for which relevant departments have been assigned relevant duties.
A representative of the State Bank of Pakistan said that for freelancers, the decision to increase the monthly limit of foreign remittance to $25,000 would be completed in two days.
Freelancers will be given incentives on the received amount and the exchange of foreign currency into local currency will be done at the inter-bank rate, he said.
The meeting was told that an e-payment gateway will be established by April. A representative of the Federal Bureau of Revenue gave a briefing on tax incentives to the IT sector.
They should do something about right of way issues facing fiber optic ISPs. If they can remove the bureaucratic hurdles there it can make a huge difference. 5G will require more cell towers and all of them will require fiber connectivity.
This..everytime i ask stormfiber to deploy fiber in my area this is what they say “we don’t have right of way”
In our area StormFiber deployed the network but our mafia building union were getting kickback from cable operator got their whole network taken down.
they want to limit us at $25000 to rule over us
just make an easy paisa alternative with no fees