BOOSTING FOREX THROUGH TELECOM AND SOFTWARE EXPORTS.

Byline: AHSAN NISAR

FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT IN TELECOM

The telecom sector has been a star performer lately when it comes to foreign direct investment. The sudden rise in telecom FDI this fiscal, however, owes mainly to the license renewal. Telecom companies have made partial payments to renew their right to operate in Pakistan. The government, meanwhile, pocketed valuable non-tax revenues to meet IMF targets. There have been rounds of inflows and outflows in the telecom sector but since the ministry is vacant, the government needs to come up with some ideas for sustaining high level telecom FDI as there are plenty of avenues. The issues of declining average revenue per user and regulatory uncertainties could be addressed by instituting a fairly-priced and predictable spectrumauction regime, offering fiscal incentives for greater fiber-optic connectivity, and making it easy to invest in telecom tower business.

SOFTWARE EXPORTS

Pakistan, with more than 30 percent population between the 15-20-year age brackets, is touted as one of the financially attractive destinations for outsourcing services. With more than 5,000 IT companies providing services to entities in around 100 countries, Pakistan information communication technology (ICT) sector is undergoing a boom as more than 10,000 application developers, freelancers enter into the workforce each year. The export sector remains focused on animation, software development, gaming, systems integration, billing and telemarketing services. Pakistan's information technology (IT) and IT enabled Services (ITeS) export remittances have surged to $550.503 million at a growth rate of 24.71 percent during the first six months of the fiscal year 2019-2020 (July-December), compared to $441.435 million during thesame period last year.

The number of Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) registered IT andITeS Companies has risen to 2,163...

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