OTTAWA, Canada: The High Commissioner of Pakistan to Canada Raza Bashir Tarar has underlined the need for the use of Information Technology (IT) in promoting business and trade between Pakistan and Canada keeping in view of the COVID-19 pandemic.
While participating in a Virtual Session of Global Pakistan Tech Summit arranged by startup grind Pakistan chapter, the High Commissioner 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 a facilitative approach towards the IT industry and interaction with public sector stakeholders 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.
Raza Bashir Tarar informed that Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) an organization under the Ministry of Information Technology & Telecommunication (MoIT&T) has shown a growth of 23.94 percent 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 rigor.
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.
The Canadian High Commissioner in Islamabad Ms. Wendy Gilmour was also a participant and expressed her satisfaction with the IT experts employed by Canadian companies from Pakistan with special reference to Faisalabad.
Ms. Wendy Gilmour also expressed her appreciation for the high quality of software development in Pakistan.
