Pakistan has been declared the 8th fastest growing freelancing country based on the year-on-year revenue growth of its freelancers, a report by Payoneer, a US-based financial services company, has revealed.
Titled “Freelancing in 2020,” the report notes that Pakistan, India, Ukraine, and the US remained the hottest freelance markets in the world during 2020 despite the significant decrease in the demand for freelance services following the Coronavirus pandemic.
According to the report, Pakistan’s gig economy witnessed a massive surge in the number of new freelancers thanks to a number of initiatives of the incumbent federal government to trains thousands of youngsters to take up freelancing.
In March last year, Pakistan shut down educational institutions to contain the spread of Coronavirus. As a result, the federal government expanded the domain of the E-Rozgaar program to all over the country, allowing youngsters to learn new skills and become freelancers. More than 500,000 youngsters were trained under the expanded E-Rozgaar program.
Furthermore, the demand for Pakistani freelancers took a massive hit due to the overall slowdown of the global economy. As a result, Pakistani freelancers observed a 64% drop in their year-on-year revenues.
In January 2020, monthly revenue growth in the income of Pakistani freelancers witnessed a decrease of 5%. The revenue increased by only 2% in February but jumped to 21% in March.
However, the monthly revenue observed a decrease of 5% once again in April before skyrocketing to 36% in May and 47% in June.
Low short-term revenue growth in Q1 was followed by soaring revenue growth in Q2.
Speaking in this regard, Kashif Taj CEO of TechEase Solutions, an Islamabad-based software company, said that the Coronavirus pandemic affected businesses all over the world regardless of their size and location.
However, the Pakistani freelancing industry boomed after a dry spell in Q1 2020 and this boom is only going to increase in the coming years, Kashif added.
