Prof Atta-ur-Rahman
The information technology has transformed the world into a global village. It has opened up huge new opportunities for the developing world to leap frog and progress rapidly through new avenues that have opened up in education, trade, industry and scientific research.
The IT sector started growing in Pakistan in the year 2000 after a decade of stagnation. During the period March 2000-2002, a 6000 percent increase was given to the development budget of the ministry of science & technology, and 310 projects were launched at a cost of Rs25 billion in various fields of the information technology, telecommunications and science. The IT policy was approved by the cabinet within six months in an effort ably led by Salman Ansari. We then set about rapidly expanding the IT sector. The dramatic progress made by Pakistan in the IT/telecom sector during 2000-2002 is presented below:
• The mobile telecommunication sector was given a huge boost. The rates of phone calls from mobile phones were drastically reduced. UFone, was launched and the rates of calls from mobile telephone were slashed. Previously both the person making the calls and those receiving the calls had to pay call charges. There was therefore a reluctance on the part of most people, particularly those belonging to the lower middle class, to own mobile telephones as they did not want to pay for calls made by others. Following the excellent advice of the adviser to the ministry, Salman Ansari, the Calling Party Pays (CPP) regime was introduced so that persons receiving calls did not pay any charges. This led to an explosive growth of the mobile telephone sector. There were only about 225,000 mobile phones in Pakistan in January 2001. There was a 500 percent increase in the subsequent 18 months as compared to the previous 11 years, reaching 1.2 million by August 2002 – the number has now crossed the 100 million mark, making this by far the hottest growing sector of our economy. It has had far reaching impact on the livelihoods of millions.
• Pakistan’s Communication Satellite PAKSAT-1 was placed in space by early 2003, thereby securing the strategically important orbital slot in space at 38º east.
Internet access was rapidly increased from only 29 cities in August 2000 to over a thousand cities, towns and villages by 2002, and optical fibre was laid across the country, increasing penetration from 40 cities to 400 towns and cities.
• The total bandwidth was increased from 32 MB/s in 2000 to 610 MB/s by the end of 2002.
• The rates of the bandwidth were reduced from a ridiculous $87,000 for 2 MB/s to $3500 by the end of 2002, making us the cheapest in the region.
• The number of internet users was increased from only 130,000 in August 2000 to four million users by the end of 2002 – the exponential growth continued in subsequent years.
• Seven new IT university campuses were established in Lahore, Abbottabad, Balochistan and Sindh, including COMSATS, FAST, Virtual University and provincial universities. IT and computer science departments were established in 34 universities. Over 1000 scholarships were given to IT students to study in Pakistan and abroad.
Endowments of over Rs1 billion were created for various universities to promote IT and 25,000 school teachers were trained with support from Intel.
• The Pakistan Educational Research Network (PERN) project connected 56 public sector universities and it became the platform of the HEC digital library providing free access to 60,000 text-books and 25,000 international journals in all public sector universities – a huge reservoir of knowledge.
• Software technology parks were setup at Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and Islamabad. To promote software exports a 15 years tax exemption was given, that led to a rapid increase in exports that are presently estimated at $800 million, as compared to only $30 million in 2001.
• The procedures of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority were simplified so that the average time for approving or rejecting applications was reduced from the previous 360 days to seven days, thereby curbing corruption.
• Projects amounting to Rs208 million were launched in the four provinces and AJK for computerisation of government departments as part of e-government initiatives.
The spectacular progress made in Pakistan in a short two year period in the IT and mobile telecom sectors under my charge as federal minister of S&T illustrates the huge potential for progress, given a visionary and honest government.
The writer is former federal minister for science and technology, former chairman of the Higher Education Commission.
Email: [email protected]
Source: The News
