The High Commissioner, Raza Bashir Tarar underlined the need for use of IT in promoting business and trade between Pakistan and Canada keeping in view the COVID-19 pandemic, while participating in a virtual session of Global Pakistan Tech Summit arranged by startup grind, Pakistan chapter, says a press release received here today from Ottawa.
High Commissioner Tarar said that the usage of IT would mitigate the economic fallout from this pandemic and emphasized on Pakistani entrepreneurs to look into the areas of possible collaboration in a wide range of sectors, including education, financial services, professional services, manufacturing, construction, transportation, oil and gas, natural resources, ICT, and public sector.
The High Commissioner said that Pakistan’s Ministry of Information Technology & Telecommunication has also adopted facilitative approach towards IT industry and interaction with public sector stake holders resulting in better coordination, “Digital development is on the rise and as per the figures released by the State Bank of Pakistan, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the information and communication sector for the period July 2019-March 2020 was US$ 491.3 billion” he added.
He informed that Pakistan Software Expert Board (PSEB) an organization under the Ministry of Information Technology & Telecommunication (MoIT&T) has showed a growth of 23.94 % for the same period.
The discussion focused on facilitating the startups and addressing the challenges they face. There was a consensus that the startups needed to be science driven and having academic and business rigour. It was also noted that to promote business activities, the work ethics and the business environment of a country needed to be taken into consideration.
Ms. Wendy Gilmour, Canadian High Commissioner in Islamabad was also a participant and expressed her satisfaction with the IT experts employed by Canadian companies from Pakistan with special reference to Faisalabad. She also expressed her appreciation for the high quality of software development in Pakistan.
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