ISLAMABAD: Dr. Umar Saif, Federal Minister (IT & Telecommunication), Pakistan has said that IT industry has great export potential but it is compelled to keep its dollars abroad.
In a statement, he said IT companies have to pay salaries of their international employees placed with foreign clients, and incur monthly expenses for cloud hosting, marketing and sales on platforms like Google, Amazon, Azure, LinkedIn etc.
We worked with the SIFC and the State Bank to make a big policy intervention last month, allowing IT companies to keep 50% of their export revenue in dollars in an account in Pakistan and make their international expenses without any restrictions from this amount.
Result? IT companies are beginning to bring their dollars back home, and our export revenue jumped by 14% in one month! A 20% increase compared to last year.
At this rate, we will cross $3 billion IT exports in a few months, in our journey towards $10 Billion IT export revenue. Onwards and upwards!
