Govt, IT industry work in tandem to increase ITES exports: Anusha

Islamabad: The first meeting of Executive Council Forum to boost Pakistan’s IT and ITES exports was held in the Ministry of Information Technology on Thursday, says a press release.

The meeting was chaired by the Minister of State for IT Anusha Rehman Khan and attended by Secretary IT & Telecom, MoIT Officers, CEOs of top five IT exporters, financial/ banking sector organisations, BPO/call centres, IT consulting, mobile applications, IT industry enthusiasts and multinational companies, State Bank of Pakistan, SECP, academia, Telco’s representatives and CEOs of National ICT R&D Fund and USF Co.

The minister welcomed all the participants of the meeting and explained that multi-stakeholder High Level Executive Council Forum (ECF) has been constituted to work on how to increase IT & ITES exports as part of the government economic growth agenda.

The minister stated that the private sector will play an important role in consultative process to formulate a comprehensive short and long term strategy, action plan and recommendations to facilitate and coordinate the growth in IT & ITES exports of Pakistan.

She also told the meeting that the Government of Pakistan has unveiled a progressive Budget 2017-18 especially for the Information Technology sector of the country. One of the highlights of the federal budget is the revelation that the new tech companies will be exempted from income tax for the next three years in Pakistan. She further added that there is zero income tax on IT exports till June 2019 to boost the local IT industry.

She added that the ministry was progressively working on the establishment of state-of-the-art IT park in Islamabad, as pilot project, in collaboration with Korean Exim Bank for the provision of appropriate environment for the IT companies.

The minister of state highlighted that the ministry was in the process of initiating national level digital skills training programme for freelancers through which one million individuals will be trained in the next five years. In this regard, she asked the IT industry to provide their valuable input to National ICT R&D Fund Co. / Ignite for the provision of requisite digital skills training programme for freelancers across the country.

In the meeting, a detailed discussion was held and the participants of the meeting provided innovative suggestions to boost IT & ITES exports, mitigate gaps between academia and IT industry, HR development and proliferation of e-commerce through the development of local e-commerce platform.