ISLAMABAD: Minister of State for Information Technology (IT) Anusha Rehman Khan Tuesday underlined the importance of public-private partnership to explore the true potential of IT in the country.
She was addressing the 4th Pakistan CIO Summit in Karachi which was attended by chief information officers (CIOs) and chief executive officers (CEOs) from ICT sector as well as officials from the IT Ministry and Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB).
The summit started with speeches by various executives followed by a documentary on Pakistan's IT industry produced by PSEB, said a press release issued here.
Anusha Rehman Khan spoke about ministry's vision for IT, which was to put in place an accelerated digitization ecosystem to enable socio-economic development, to expand knowledge-based economy, and to spur the economic growth.
She said IT was the fastest growing exports sector of the country at present with a growth rate of over 41% during 2014-15.
Pakistan was in top five countries of Upwork, the world's largest freelancing network, in terms of freelancing revenue, she said.
The minister said the government was offering many incentives to investors in the IT sector, including zero taxes on exports, 100% repatriation of profits, 100% equity ownership, and 7-year tax holiday for venture capital funds.
The industry, she said, had to reciprocate and collaborate with the government on defining KPIs (key performance indicators) for the IT sector over the next five years such as increase in remittances, foreign direct investment and employment generation.
The minister emphasized the importance of public-private partnership (PPP) and invited the IT industry people to provide their input for policy.
She focused on the concept of gender balance in the IT industry and mentioned that the ministry had kept minimum percentage of 30% females in all industry support programmes such as internships and training to motivate more females to join the IT workforce.
The minister later visited stalls of different exhibitors at the event and emphasized that the industry should play its role to aggregate figures to provide a better picture of Pakistan's IT industry to the global world.
The documentary was followed by a panel discussion on the changing face of telecommunications and evolving role of CIO.
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