Engineering Post Report
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) serve as an effective tool for the dissemination of information and provision of services. It enhances productivity, optimization of resources, transparency and accountability.
The ICT sector of Pakistan is showing promising growth in many areas such as Software Development, Business Processes Outsourcing and Provision of Digital Services. The ICT sector performed well during the epidemic of CORONA-19 and brought in precious foreign remittance. Despite the recent success of the sector, it still has the potential of to expand further many folds.
The Federal Government is well aware of the potential of ICT and the role it can play in financial revival . In this regard, the Federal Government is striving to development a nurturing environment for the development of ICT throughout Pakistan and to enable ICT to make it an important contributor of the national economy.
Pakistan’s Information Technology sector is carving a differential position as the preferred source for software development, Business Processes Outsourcing and freelancing. Pakistan was ranked at number four for freelance development in the world and IT exports have accordingly increased almost 100 per cent during the last three years.
Pakistan , which has about 60 per cent of its over 200 million population in the 15 to 29 age group, represents an enormous human and knowledge capital.. The Federal Government is striving to improve its citizens quality of life and high quality ICT services. Pakistan government strongly believes in mass adoption of emerging digital technologies and transformation of economic activities, governance models , social interaction, and achievement of sustainable development goals.
Digital Pakistan aims to create a digital ecosystem with infrastructure and institutional frameworks for the rapid delivery of innovative digital services, applications and content. The federal government wants to to improve Pakistan’s ICT ranking based on international indices and benchmarks measuring the business and innovation environment , infrastructure, affordability, skills readiness, and socio-economic impact and the provision of data to the international rating agencies. Pakistan rank’s 99th among the 132 economies featured in Global Innovat ion Index (GH) 2021 and improved by 8 positions from 107 in 2020 Index.
On the physical infrastructure level, in the telecommunication sector, tele-density increased from 84.96 per cent as of March 2022 . The 3G/4G broadband services had another phenomenal year of rapid growth with subscribers increasing from 95 million in January 2021 to 116 in March 20-22.
An allocation of over Rs 6.0 billion for IT/Telecom and over Rs 7.0 billion fpr space related project were made in PSDP 2021-22 giving high priority to projects that were supposed to add to the development of knowledge based economy of the country.
