Staff Reporter
Karachi
Federal Minister of Information Technology and Telecommunication, Dr. Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui on Wednesday inaugurated the 19th edition of Pakistan’s largest annual I.T. and Communications Exhibition, ITCN Asia at the Expo Centre, Karachi. The exhibition is spread over 6 halls of the Expo Centre, with over 550 local and 250 international companies representing more than 15 countries participating in it. Over 60,000 visitors are expected to come to the Exhibition over its 3 days.
Concurrently with the Exhibition, the event also features conferences on key topics like AI Summit, IT Minister’s Forum for Youth, Innovation, Industry & Ease of Doing Business, and Cyber Security. After the inaugurating the exhibition, the Federal Minister visited various stalls and also participated in the IT Minister’s Forum for Youth, Innovation, Industry & Ease of Doing Business.
This Forum at ITCN Asia 2019 will be the platform that Pakistan’s talented youth required to showcase their skills and for industry players ranging from start-ups to established global companies to network, discuss innovations and conclude business deals and partnerships. The government is taking several steps to facilitate the business community and is also introducing reforms to increase country’s exports and bring it at par with neighboring countries. A large number of breakout sessions and B2B meetings are also being held on the sidelines of this event.
Further, on September 19, the last day of the event, Ecommerce Gateway will also be launching its innovative new B2B portal, ecombri.com, which is a unique buyer and seller platform of the Belt Road Initiative (BRI) countries. This will be a huge opportunity for opening up of several new opportunities for Pakistan, including increase in exports of non-IT products and services which have immense demand abroad, and leveraging of the BRI through joint ventures between Pakistan and Chinese SMEs to capture world markets. It is estimated that this platform and association initiatives will have the potential of enhancing non-IT export to $50 billion in three years.
