THE Federal Cabinet, which met in Islamabad on Tuesday with Prime Minister Imran Khan in the chair, moved closer to implementing the vision of the Government to make Pakistan an industrial hub by granting approval to special technology zones initially in Peshawar, Islamabad, Lahore and Haripur besides those in Karachi and Quetta. The Prime Minister described it as a step towards progress in the modern times and directed the establishment of 50 technological zones throughout the country.
This is, indeed, yet another landmark decision of the Government, which has the potential to accelerate the pace of socio-economic progress in the country. The countries of the world, especially China, which first focused on setting up special economic zones and then laid greater emphasis on technological zones are reaping the benefits in terms of attracting phenomenal foreign investment, expanding exports and training personnel with expertise in international trade. No doubt, the successive governments have contributed their share towards promotion of IT and telecom infrastructure and incentives for the sector but experts say the true potential of the sector remains untapped because of lack of proper facilities and incentives. The IT industry has been demanding Special Technology Zones (STZs) to provide opportunities for medium and small scale IT enterprises to have less infrastructure cost and overheads to enable them to do their business and earn exports and remittances for the country. The proposal for establishment of IT Clusters (known as STZs) was made a few years back by the stakeholders to emulate special economic zones for other industries but with certain IT specific incentives. The proposal should have been implemented on a war footing because of its obvious benefits for the economy but things move at a snail’s pace in the country. We hope that the Prime Minister would continue to take personal interests in the proposal and ensure that it is translated into reality with required speed.
