The IT sector in Pakistan’s economy has seen unrivalled growth in 2020. The Information
Telecommunication (IT) and IT-enabled Services (ITeS) export remittances comprising
computers, and call centre services surged to $958 million for the first half of 2020, which
amounts to a growth of a whopping 40 percent. Compare this to last year, where in the same
period; the exports amounted to a mere $684 million. The country’s total export of services
stood at $2.844bn in the first half of FY21 as compared to $2.835bn in the corresponding period
last year—these statistics show that a big reason behind the increase in exports has been the
telecommunication and information technology sector.
It is clear that the pandemic and the rise of internet use because of social distancing restrictions
have played a part in the growth, but what else factored for this rise? The government has been
trying to turn around the IT industry and re-enact reforms to ease barriers to entry; it has been
working on payment gateways to resolve lingering issues of the IT industry. A few new software
technology parks have also been set up.
It is clear that this industry is working well, and its scope will only increase in the future; thus
efforts by the government to expand the industry should be continued. The Right of Way
(ROW) policy for the telecom sector—recently approved by the federal cabinet—is an
indication that more reforms are in place. The policy clears a large number of hurdles faced by
telecoms and internet service providers in the installation and maintenance of their
telecommunication equipment and expansion of systems across the country. As we all are
aware that industry has worked well in the year of 2020 and gave good revenue as compare
other sectors. it is therefore government should work for betterment of I.T Blocks
