KARACHI, Mar 26 (APP): The participants of roundtable conference on Digital Pakistan Policy-2021 held here on Friday emphasized on launch of an aggressive campaign to create awareness on digitalization, promote IT literacy, adoption of inclusive approach and more tax incentives for IT businesses.
Pakistan Software Export Board under Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication, in pursuance of the Prime Minister’s vision of “Digital Pakistan” hosted its second consultative roundtable conference to harvest maximum feedback from the stakeholders including academia, parents, students and industry for better and target-oriented long-term national IT policy.
Federal Secretary for IT and Telecommunications, Shoaib Ahmed Siddiqui while addressing the conference via video link said the ministry believed in digital transformation that would provide access to information and opportunities, transparency and connectivity to the citizens destined to economic prosperity in the country.
First roundtable conference was held in Lahore on March 24 and the third one was scheduled to be held on April 01 in Islamabad, he said.
He said the Ministry of IT and Telecom was passionate to digitalize the country.
The digital policy, he said would serve as the foundation for digital transformation and as a change agent in the country. Pakistan direly needed to develop a strong IT base to race with the transforming world. However, he expressed his satisfaction that IT sector in Pakistan was rapidly growing.
The government had adopted inclusive approach wherein males and females would be provided equal opportunity to participate and benefit from digitalization revolution.
The Secretary said the digital Pakistan policy roundtables were being held under the supervision of Federal Minister for IT and Telecommunications, Syed Amin-ul- Haque in all major cities of the country to get detailed feedback/response from the stakeholders based on identification of the issues/barriers relating to digitalization, practical solutions and their impact on social and economic fronts.
Member IT, Ministry of IT and Telecom, Syed Junaid Imam,Managing Director of Pakistan Software Export Board, Osman Nasir and Chairman, PM’s Task Force on IT and Telecom, Syed Ahmed briefed the participants about the purpose and methodology of chalking out concrete recommendations for this very important national policy.
During the technical session discussing Fintech, e-Commerce and Digital Platforms, the participants –who were divided into groups-identified issues/barricades in furthering digitalization process presented practical solutions and briefed on their impact.
The participants were unanimous that at least all government payments should be digital.
That, for fast execution the digitalization programme should be carried out under public-private partnership mode.
It was also suggested that the policy should be for long period and that it was the government’s responsibility to digitalize nation.
It was recommended that capacity building of echo system was needed and there must be easy access to expertise for all. Internet infiltration especially in rural and remote areas was direly needed and it should be at least 4 G facilities either free or at very nominal charges.
It was observed that there was lack of financing to IT companies mainly small
businesses and that tax incentives were required to promote IT sector.
There was also need to promote products on digital platform.
It was recommended that an aggressive campaign was needed for creating awareness about digital payments. And, the common man should be encouraged for digital transactions. IT companies/services should also charge very nominal profit to ensure maximum inclusion of the people in digitalization.
It was also proposed that for creating IT manpower, night shift schools should be operated for the same.
The participants were confident that IT sector had more export potential than textile industry of the country.
