By Muhammad Abdullah
Karachi, April 22, 2019: Pakistan’s exports of IT and IT-enabled services surged to $808 million by the end of third quarter 2018-19, showing a stagnant growth compared with the corresponding period of the previous year.
According to the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), exports of IT and IT-enabled services increased to $808 million in the period of July to March of the financial year 2018-19 as compared with the $791 million recorded in the similar period of the last financial year.
Apparently, the figures reflected a modest growth of 2.1 percent in the exports receipts, however, the growth is negative keeping in mind the trend of Rupee’s depreciation against Dollar.
Roughly, the Rupee depreciated by nearly 15 percent against Dollar during the period of July to March. If these numbers of exports receipts are calculated with depreciation’s impact, the negative growth stands nearly 13 percent.
The previous and the present government have given an extraordinary emphasis on the IT industry for its applications within the country through digitization of the economy and its exploitation to the overseas through exports of IT and IT-enabled services to various countries.
The new government also set up a task force to explore the potential of IT industry in the country because of its potential projected by its representative bodies.
Not only the government but the central bank also made special arrangement for improving reporting of IT exports’ receipts and facilitation to the freelancers of IT services.
Like others, the IT industry is not performing to the desired level unfortunately neither it sustained itself to retain the growth rates of exports to the previous level.
IT exports created a history in the last financial year 2017-18 showing an all-time high exports’ number of $1 billion.
IT is one of the sectors having lots of potential in terms of expansion and exports growth. It can not only increase the much-needed export receipts of the country but it can also provide jobs to millions of Pakistan if they are provided with training and the opportunities.
