Pakistan has shortage of 500,000 IT professionals: FPCCI

KARACHI: Shabbir Mansha, Acting President FPCCI, has expressed his longstanding concern that despite having a young, energetic and driven population of 65 percent, Pakistan has not yet even partially capitalized on its potential in the various tech industries in general and IT & IT-enabled Services (ITeS) in particular. However, he maintained, Pakistan is all poised to cross the psychological barrier of $3 billion in IT exports in the outgoing fiscal year 2021 – 22.

Shabbir Mansha stated that from the feedback of the business, industry and trade community of Pakistan, we can say that Pakistan has a shortage of up to 500,000 IT professionals; as our IT exports and domestic digital transformation efforts have kicked in on a large-scale.

Nonetheless, the IT & computer science graduates from Pakistani universities are not readily employable for their lack for practical training in the universities and they invariably need internationally-accepted professional certifications before they can be meaningfully employed.

Acting FPCCI Chief has also welcomed Special Technology Zones Authority (STZA) initiatives in facilitating the establishment of tech companies and pinned his hopes that STZA will soon announce the establishment of a technology zone for Karachi soon.

Amer Hashmi, Chairman STZA, apprised the business community that the institution is working on a Triple Helix Model of Industry-Government-Academia to take a holistic and time-proven approach from the success stories of technology parks from the world over.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022