KARACHI: President Dr. Arif Alvi called for boosting intellectual resources for the progress and development of the country on sustainable grounds, adding that there was huge potential for promoting innovation in Pakistan.
While addressing the National Idea Bank Grand Finale event held here at Sir Syed University of Engineering and Technology on Monday, Dr Alvi said that promoting innovative ideas, focusing on Education and health sectors, timely adoption and adaptation to emerging technologies with the prudent political decision was crucial for any nation to move towards development. He also awarded prizes to the national contest winners over innovative ideas.
President Alvi on the Role of IT for the Development of Intellectual Resources
Dr Alvi further said that information technology was the rapidly growing sector across the world, surpassing all other sectors of fundamental importance like agriculture, finance, manufacturing, health, and Education adding that Pakistan could excel in the IT sector by motivating youth in the field to explore their intellectual strength in IT.
He added that, at present, the world needed the services of 3.4 million IT experts while about 200 billion Internet of Things (IoT) were expected to be there in the IT spectrum in the near future; however, Pakistan could play its role to contribute its share out of the available opportunities by investing in the IT sector.
Addressing the gathering, federal Minister of Information Technology and Telecommunication Syed Aminul Haque stated that the key objective of ‘Ideas Bank’ was to collect and explore innovative ideas.
He further said that 60 percent of the 220 million population of the country comprised youth, which was an asset that has to be utilized and promoted by equipping them with updated technologies.
Chief Executive Officer Aspire, Hassan Syed, in his welcome address, expressed that this year over 3700 ideas were submitted for NIB, where the jury picked 30 ideas for prizes from a wide range of sectors, including Agriculture, Transport, Automotive, Education and Learning, Health, Information Technology, Natural Resources and Services, and Manufacturing.
The last year 2100 ideas were submitted, where 18 were selected as the winner, while 15 start-ups out of the winner list of 2022 had already begun their activities.
