Pakistan is estimated to make roughly $7 billion from the information technology sector in two to four years.
The Secretary of the Board of Investment (BoI), Fareena Mazhar, spoke at a seminar at the Pakistan Pavilion at the Dubai Expo 2020 and apprised foreign investors that Pakistan’s IT sector had exceeded expectations over the last few years. She added that experts predict that it will redouble to $7 billion in the next two to four years.
Many foreign investors and Pakistani expatriates attended the conference and expressed interest in the country’s current potential.
Later on, while discussing Pakistan’s IT-led services sector and the money that goes through it, the BoI Secretary explained how the government had made the technology-led income tax-free until 2025, so Pakistan’s great profit margins and business-friendly atmosphere could be compared to other countries going through similar makeshift transformations.
“Pakistan’s IT market is full of qualified people who are equipped to cater to the needs of the market at relatively low costs”, she said. She also highlighted the prevailing economic era, saying that with COVID-19, the landscape is rapidly focusing on e-commerce and online marketplaces, and that Pakistan’s young talent in the IT field may be used to promote and build enterprises.
Mazhar went on to say that Pakistan comes fourth in the world for freelancing development, and digital growth in Pakistan is rapidly evolving. She told the investors that the Government of Pakistan is committed to preserving and encouraging foreign investments and that the Board of Investment will assist them in completing their investments.
Notably, about 42.4 percent of freelancers in Pakistan are in software development, making up about 10.5 percent of the global freelancers in the field. This is much higher than those in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, but lower than in India, according to the World Bank. Additionally, Pakistan now has the third-highest number of freelancers among the IT and IT-enabled services in the world, right after India and Bangladesh.
