ISLAMABAD, August 20 2006: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Saturday (Aug 19) directed the ministry of information technology to urgently set up IT parks in Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi on a priority basis. He was presiding over a meeting held here at the PM House to review the IT industry’s growth. The prime minister was informed that plans for land acquisition for the parks were being finalized and the construction of Islamabad IT Park would begin in October.

In the outsourcing business, the prime minister said that Pakistan offered a viable destination for parsing out services in an environment with reliable infrastructure, adding that undersea cables provided redundancy. At the moment, Pakistan had three international links and more links were being planned, he said. He said the government was facilitating the private sector by providing an enabling environment as well as financial support to Software and IT-enabled companies.

Mr. Aziz said the government had provided a level playing field to local and foreign companies, which resulted in increased investments and record growth in the sector. The ministry of information technology in its presentation said that IT industry growth and human resource expansion has created 300 per cent increase in office space requirement for IT companies in Islamabad.

The ministry submitted a strategy to address the demand for IT-enabled office space to IT companies. Minister for Information Technology Awais Ahmed Khan Leghari said that the total size of IT business in Pakistan was about $2 billion with 50 per cent annual growth during the past three year. It included domestic industry, hardware and export of software and IT-enabled services. The premier was informed that the IT-related product export had reached $600 million and was also expected to grow by 50 per cent annually.
Source: Dawn
Date:8/20/2006