On Friday, the representative of Pakistan Software House Association (P@SHA), Saeed Ahmed, informed the National Assembly standing committee on IT and Telecommunication that the IT sector exports have reached at $650 million for the financial year 2016-17. To assess the overall performance of Pakistan Software Exports Board (PSEB), Farhana Qamar chaired the sub-committee meeting.
While speaking to the sub-committee, Saeed Ahmed also projected that the IT sector will surpass the textile sector. He said:
“The IT sector is likely to cross the textile sector exports by 2025. Sector of IT in Pakistan has a profit margin ranging from 5-30 percent”
Also Read: National IT Policy 2016 predicts IT exports worth $6 billion by 2020
Why is the IT sector lagging behind?
During his briefing, he lashed hard at the severe taxation measures of Federal Board of Revenue and its methodologies. He said that these are the reasons why IT sector is losing the customers. In addition, he further stated that deficiency of quality human resource as well as visa problems had also affected IT exports from Pakistan.
Saeed Ahmed also said that if it was not for the bad image of Pakistan abroad, the IT sector exports would have been recorded at $5 billion by now. Due to tarnished image of the country abroad, big companies chose to do business with India.
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In the last 2 years, the IT exports from the country had grown 76% out of which 70% of the exports are to the companies in US. However, most of the IT companies in Pakistan fail to secure visa for US/Europe. As a result, they are simply unable to reach large contract agreements online and hence unable to do business with them.
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