Kakar gives go-ahead to plan aimed at bringing PayPal, Starlink to Pakistan
ISLAMABAD: Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar on Wednesday approved the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication plan for enhancing exports, bringing Starlink and PayPal.
This was claimed by caretaker Federal Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunication, Dr Umar Saif after the prime minister held a review meeting regarding information technology and telecom sectors.
The meeting was attended by Federal Minister for Information Technology Dr Saif, Adviser to Prime Minister Ahad Khan Cheema and relevant senior officials.
Umar Saif expresses wish to bring PayPal, stripe payment gateways to Pakistan
The ministry’s initiatives for the development of Pakistan’s IT sector and the action plan for increasing domestic IT exports were presented before the meeting.
Saif claimed the prime minister approved the plan for the ministry which included:
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Enhance IT exports by institutionalizing dollar retention accounts, IT corporate debit cards to enable easy flow of money in and out of retention accounts, streamlining tax issues and training 200,000 IT professionals to add $5 billion to IT exporters.
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Bring PayPal and Stripe to Pakistan and establish co-working spaces for 500,000 freelancers to increase their potential to an additional $3 billion per year
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Launch Starlink in Pakistan to improve connectivity throughout the country.
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Launch government-backed Pakistan Venture Capital Fund to attract top-tier international VCs to Pakistan. Enable $1 billion VC investment in startups.
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Enable active spectrum sharing, forward-looking taxation policies, regulations and incentives for the telecom industry to prepare for the upcoming 5G auction within 10 months.
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Incentives for local manufacturing and export of smartphones in Pakistan, as well as smartphone financing platform (so that people can easily get phones on monthly instalments) to enhance local demand.
According to the official statement, the meeting was told that the Ministry of IT is taking steps to digitise all government services at the federal level and bring them under one umbrella. This initiative will help the government to improve the tax collection system and better identify tax evasion. Apart from this, the goal of complete digitisation of Pakistan’s economy will also be achieved.
The meeting was also informed about the steps taken by the ministry for the development of the country’s IT industry.
The meeting was told that with the cooperation of universities and IT experts across the country, it will be made mandatory for students studying in this field to get IT training of international standards. With this initiative, it will be possible to add 0.2 million more skilled people in the IT industry, which will increase the exports of this sector by up to five billion dollars.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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