KARACHI: Caretaker Federal Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunication Dr. Umar Saif on Thursday said that IT industry of Pakistan had grown and the industry could fix Pakistan’s trade imbalance as this was a service based industry, thus no bill of import as no goods being sent to Pakistan.
He shared these views as chief guest at inauguration ceremony of “ITCN Asia 2023”, International IT & Telecom Show at Expo Centre here.
The minister said that the key difference between the IT industry and all the other traditional industries was that the IT was a service based industry.
Dr. Umar Saif said that we lived in a country where the Achilles heel of our economy is how much we can export. But the Achilles heel is that wherever we decide to export, whenever we increase our exports, we also have to import a lot of stuff and raw material.
He said that the textile industry and all the other traditional industries in Pakistan also depend on import of raw materials, which means that even if we begin to export, even if there is a lot of domestic consumption, our trade imbalance continues to go into a boom, he added.
He said that the solution to this, of course, is the growth of service-based industries, industries for which the raw material already exists in this country as our biggest raw material, our biggest strength is a very large, educated, tech-savvy, skilled, young population. The average Pakistani is only 22 years old, he noted.
The minister said that our close to half a million graduates from university every year as a lot of them do technical degrees and could be employed here or become part of the global workforce to what is now called the gig economy.
He pointed out that our IT companies were not able to employ a lot of the skilled, educated, tech-savvy youth, added, they became the second largest online worker marketplace in the world.
We talked so much about the negativity, the challenges of this country but the young people of this country did not wait for us to step up and do anything for them. They bought a laptop, they teamed up with a friend, and they became part of a global workforce, he said.
The minister said that Pakistan had close to 400,000 online freelancers who make between $5 to 10 every day and this online freelancing, where skilled workers from Pakistan can become part of a global marketplace of workers is the key for the growth in Pakistan.
He said that there was no other industry in which Pakistan could claim to be even in the top five in the world except this online freelancing industry. Close to 400,000 people registered on various online platforms, out of which about 150,000 people do online freelancing regularly.
He said that we drew up a list of a wish list of things from the IT industry, and he is so pleased to read it because it is all doable.
These are little things that we should be able to do in policy, in rules, and decisions within the government. No one has to take money out of their pocket and give it to the IT industry to grow, he said.
He said that at this point, the IT industry did not quite stand at $2.6 billion. It stands at what is $3.5 billion and we really must do everything in our power to make sure that they bring all the money back to Pakistan.
He added, we facilitate then that they’re able to spend this money internationally without having to go through 50 approvals from the authorities.
The Federal Minister said that he is here not only to attend this conference, but also to meet the Governor of State Bank tomorrow to finally start this conversation on how we can have dollar retention accounts where the IT business professionals can keep all their money in dollars, where they can then spend this in dollars using digital instruments and online banking, he added.
He said that he is going to go advocate the case of IT industry tomorrow and called upon the IT industry people to help him do it. “Don’t keep your money outside of Pakistan. This country needs every dollar it can get from its productive service-based industries led by the IT industry in Pakistan”, he said.
He said that we are also going to train manpower in IT industry because the addition of 100,000 software developers to the IT industry, will give a boost of $2 billion per year. Our universities graduate close to 35,000 to 40,000 in IT and IT-like degrees every year but the IT industry cannot employ more than 10 percent of them, he added.
He said that his goal is to put things in motion to train 100,000 universities graduates to become billable resources for the IT industry because for every 100,000 that we add, we make $2 billion additional for IT exports.
Dr Umar Saif said that the freelancers cannot easily monetize their skills because there is no pay tag in Pakistan and no stripe payment gateway. It shouldn’t be that hard to convince pay tag for the second largest online workforce to have access to a payment instrument like PayPal, he said.
He said that it is very, very high priority to him to enable PayPal and Stripe payments in Pakistan. We’re not talking about small opportunity here as this is the second largest online workforce in the world, he said.
He said that we want to go to them and vociferously argue for our online freelancers and online e-commerce companies that they could really benefit if they had access to PayPal and Stripe.
Later,the minister was also presented a souvenir.
