Managing Director SAP Pakistan, Saquib Ahmad, has urged the Government of Pakistan to streamline the tax regime for the country’s Information Technology (IT) sector and devise long-term policies to ensure consistency and provide security to investors.
Talking to media in Islamabad on Monday, the key figure of the global tech giant in Pakistan emphasized that the Prime Minister’s relief package for IT sector must be for at least five years in order to attract investment. The industry, he noted, welcomed the recent announcement of a special tax relief package for IT sector as an encouraging decision. He hoped that the initiative would give impetus to the country’s IT exports.
Saquib Ahmad was of the view that inconsistency in government policies cast a negative impression on the investors, especially in the IT sector.
He said that SAP transformed the public and private sector in the country with high-end technologically advanced software integrated into the systems. He added that every industry customized the software as per its requirements. He observed that businesses in Pakistan were transforming fast to digitalization. He said the Ministry of Finance budget operations were being run on the SAP software, which was in line with the IMF [International Monetary Fund] recommendations. He maintained that the Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP) office, power distribution companies, banks, oil and gas exploration companies, and several other government and private organizations were benefitting from the software.
He said SAP was also providing free training to Pakistani youth under the Prime Minister Kamyab Jawan Program.
Briefing on digitalization in Pakistan and SAP’s role, Saquib Ahmad said because
Owing to, he said, the far-reaching nationwide transformation initiatives such as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and Pakistan Vision 2025, Pakistan’s organizations were eagerly outlining digital transformation agendas.
“The next era of computing will be defined by intelligent enterprises. Organizations need to cut through the hype and be more useful and efficient to be an intelligent enterprise to make the world run better using emerging technologies,” he underlined.
He noted that in a challenging business climate, companies needed to seize every competitive advantage. These advantages are digital, he said.
Speaking about SAP, he said the company had over 22,000 partners worldwide in more than 140 countries, driving their digitalization journey. He cited a study by McKinsey saying that since the pandemic, there had been a palpable sense of urgency among business leaders to digitalize and modernize their processes and legacy systems.
He opined that an intelligent enterprise had greater visibility, focus, and agility, allowing it to do more with less, offer best-in-class customer experience, and develop new business models and revenue streams. He said that many businesses were considering welcoming a ‘Cloud-first strategy’ into their IT operations, as the cloud took on a more predominant role in the modern world.
He said that the ‘Cloud-first strategy’ and the use of a cloud solution instead of building a non-cloud-based solution helped organizations with savings and scalability, reducing human error, and allowing for better streamlining and coordination.
Saquib Ahmad said the latest SAP cloud offerings helped companies optimize their end-to-end processes and innovate with new capabilities in the cloud while reducing operating costs, improving productivity, and unlocking new opportunities for growth.
He said SAP was already seeing strong success in co-innovating with Pakistan’s digital leaders, diligently working to realize the Digital Pakistan vision by supporting skills development and training of youth in collaboration with major universities.