Pakistan’s IT sector is poised to grow exponentially in the coming months and years with Pakistan’s IT exports growing from USD 2.1 billion to an ap-proximate USD 3.5 billion this fiscal year.
The IT industry in Pakistan is burgeoning and the government is taking the right steps for its fur-ther growth, including enhancing number of IT graduates from 25,000 to 50,000, setting up soft-ware technology parks in large to 2nd tier cities, improving access to capital by IT companies, reduc-ing tax disputes, enhancing financial structure of IT companies and listing them at the stock exchange.
These were some of the views expressed at a webinar organised by the Consulate General of Pakistan Toronto on the theme of “Pakistan Canada IT Cooperation: Connecting the Dots”.
The objectives of the webinar were to provide a platform for interaction between Pakistan origin ITC professionals in Canada and IT industry and academia from Pakistan. The panelists of the webi-nar included Mr. Osman Nasir, Managing Director, Pakistan Software Export Board, Mr. Barkan Saeed, ex-President Pakistan Software House Association, Mr. Hassan Naqvi, President, CM Inc., Canada, Dr. Shakeel Ahmad Khoja, Dean School of Mathemat-ics & Computer Science, IBA, Karachi, Mr. Kewan Khawaja, Co-founder and Co-CEO, M/s Techlogix, Mr. Jahan Ali, CEO of Mobile Live, Canada, Mr. Raheel Qureshi, founder and Partner M/s iSecurity Consulting, Canada, and Mr. Hassan Ramay, Man-aging Partner GoSaaS Inc. It was attended by a large no. of IT professionals/companies from Paki-stan and Canada.
In his opening remarks Mr. Abdul Hameed, Consul General of Pakistan, Toronto, stated that it is widely believed that Pakistan has the potential to claim a much higher share of the market than it currently enjoys.
He also shared the statistics about the size and growth trajectory of ICT sector of Can-ada, and highlighted the key sectors within the ICT sector which witnessed high growth and the top ICT players in Canada. Mr. Osman Nasir, MD PSEB, said large tech-nology parks are being set up in the mega cities, in addition to establishing software technology parks in second/third tier cities. —PR
