Kakar okays ambitious plan to hike IT exports to $10bn

ISLAMABAD: Caretaker Prime Minister Anwar-ul-Haq Kakar has accorded his approval to a plan for jacking up the IT exports up to $10 billion from the existing level of $2.6 billion on per annum basis.

The premier granted the approval during a meeting with Minister for Information Technology Dr Umar Saif, which was held here at the PM Office on Wednesday.

The caretaker minister for IT also informed the premier that the auction of 5G technology would be done in the next 10 months in order to fetch billions of dollars investment to the country.

Dr Umar Saif presented a comprehensive plan for the promotion of IT and telecom industry, and the caretaker PM approved it. The plan includes enhancing IT exports by institutionalising dollar retention accounts, IT corporate debit cards to enable easy flow of money in and out of retention accounts, streamlining tax issues and training 200,000 IT professionals to add $5 billion to IT exports.

Dr Umar Saif stated that they would bring PayPal and Stripe to Pakistan and establish co-working spaces for 500,000 freelancers to increase their potential to fetch an additional $3 billion per year.

The minister said the government would launch Starlink in Pakistan to improve connectivity throughout the country, launch government-backed Pakistan Venture Capital Fund to attract top-tier international VCs to Pakistan. The government, he said, would enable $1 billion VC investment in start-ups. He said the government would enable active spectrum sharing, forward-looking taxation policies, regulations and incentives for the telecom industry to prepare for the upcoming 5G auction within 10 months period. In this regard, he said the government would provide incentives for local manufacturing and export of smart phones in Pakistan, as well as smartphone financing platform (so that people can easily get phones on monthly instalments).