Heather Cruden, Canadian High Commissioner to Pakistan called on Minister of State for IT and Telecom, Anusha Rahman at Ministry of IT and discussed matters of mutual interest with special reference to enhancing bilateral relations between the two countries. The Minister apprised the Canadian Envoy regarding ongoing projects of the Ministry including Tele centres projects, special projects ICT for girls, projects for the dwellers of unserved and underserved areas and establishment of state of the art technology parks which is being built with the assistance of Korean Exim Bank.
Anusha Rahman informed the Canadian High Commissioner that through the Universal Services Fund Co, more than 4,000km optic fiber had been laid in the difficult terrain of Balochistan and rural telephony projects had been initiated to provide telecommunication connectivity in far-flung areas of KP and Balochistan.
While talking about the local manufacturing, the Minister said "our government has offered special incentives to promote local manufacturing of smart-phones. Haier Group of companies has recently got NOC to establish the first smart mobile phones assembling plant. Canadian telecom manufacturing companies can also invest in our rapidly growing sector and could get benefit from these special incentives. The Minister also invited Canadian companies to look at the software development sector of Pakistan having IT software exports touching around two billion dollars.-PR