Pakistan's IT services exports can reach $10 billion: OICCI report.

ISLAMABAD -- The Overseas International Chamber of Commerce and Industries (OICCI)'s digital report has noted that Pakistan's IT services exports have potential to reach $10 billion.

The 'OICCI Recommendations for Digital Economy' report was launched Monday highlighting the much-needed shift required to capture the opportunity of digital transformation happening within and outside Pakistan through New Economy mindset. By digitizing most, if not all, key segments of the economy could boost IT export to US$10 billion annually, provide significant growth to GDP, attract billions of dollars of FDI and create hundreds of thousands new jobs within a short time.

Overseas Investors Chamber of Commerce and Industry (OICCI) membership includes some of the best-known IT MNCs, including IBM, SAP, Teradata, who also actively contributed towards the development of these Digital Economy recommendations and offered to run one Integrated technology training program for up to half a million Certified Resources in Pakistan using global courses successfully being run in many advanced countries.

These are online industry focused programs where the government needs to invest only on tracking, adoption and placement through one Program office located in the Ministry of IT. OICCI Digital Recommendations highlight the importance of shift to skill development from academic degrees to ensure productive and effective participation of Pakistani talent in New Economy that is growing much faster and attracting capital globally.

Highlighting the potential for the IT export, OICCI President Haroon Rashid commented that 'whereas IT exports from Pakistan are only US$ 1 to 2b, Philippines, with half the population of Pakistan exports IT services of about $ 30b, India IT exports are over $ 190b and many other Asian countries are also well ahead of Pakistan, which should be a cause of great concern to the authorities but at the same time could be a motivational factor as Pakistan has great potential to boost its IT exports with focused short and medium term strategy and its delivery by the key stakeholders, as recommended in the OICCI Recommendations for Digital Economy report.' The OICCI report further highlights the importance of stable and inclusive regulatory practices to ensure...