Minister
sees software exports booming
ISLAMABAD: The government
said on Wednesday it would offer its neglected but nascent information
technology sector a major boost, aiming to increase software exports to
over $1 billion annually within the next five years. Science and
Technology Minister Atta-ur-Rehman told Reuters in an interview the
country's IT sector showed tremendous potential. "If we talk about
software exports we are aiming to have about 40,000 software engineers
developed in the next five years so that we can have a
multi-billion-dollar export figure," Rehman said.
Pakistan's existing
software exports are put at between $50 million and $100 million a year.
Since being hired in 1999, Rehman has turned around what he calls the
"criminal neglect" of the sector to make a priority of the
government with the belief that it could be an engine of economic
growth.
In the current financial
year that ends on June 30, the budget for science and technology was
raised to Rs4.8 billion ($76 million) from a meagre Rs200 million the
previous year. For the next year starting in July, Rehman hopes the
budget for his area of responsibility would be again raised by up to 35
per cent, most of it for the information technology sector and the rest
for other scientific and research programmes.
"But information
technology is getting the highest priority because it is here we feel
the maximum impact on the society will be," Rehman said, citing a
long list of government achievements made in the last eight months.
"There is a very dramatic growth taking place right now in the IT
area in Pakistan," he said referring to 400 Pakistani cities, towns
and villages which have been wired for the Internet in the last eight
months, from a mere 20 before that. "This dramatic and
unprecedented expansion of Internet, which is unparalleled in any
country of the world, shows what we Pakistanis can do when we are
determined," he said.
The membership at the
country's private Pakistan Software Houses Association has risen to 150
from 110 in October 2000. "The new companies which have come in a
short period of eight months is also unprecedented in the last 10
years," Rehman said.
Similarly, the number of
medical transcription companies in Pakistan has risen to more than 100
from just a couple a year ago, and the minister said legal transcription
companies were also springing up as more and more manpower became
available.
"But this is only a
beginning. The key would be the development of human resources with the
right quality and quantum if you want to go for a multi-billion-dollar
export," he said. "We have therefore given the highest
priority to strengthening our computer science departments," he
added. The country plans to set up seven information technology
universities in the next five years, including one virtual university
that should start courses in the Autumn of 2001.
"I wish we had
started doing this five to 10 years ago. But we have started doing it
now and I hope that within the next three to four years we would have
made very, very major advances in the field of information
technology," he said
