Govt negotiating with other countries for IT
* Existing pool of IT experts is not sufficient to meet domestic requirements
By Ijaz Kakakhel
ISLAMABAD: To encourage Information Technologies, the government is negotiating with many countries including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Kazakhstan, Iran, Nepal, Maldives, Vietnam, Italy, Serbia, Egypt, Tunisia, Sudan, Mauritius, Ireland for mutual cooperation and investment in IT and IT enabled sectors in Pakistan.
The Pakistan Software Export Board, through Ministry of Commerce is negotiating with these foreign countries; sources told Daily Times here on Friday. The foreign companies are offered cooperation and encouraged to invest in IT and IT enabled services sector through public and private forums on a regular basis by Pakistan Software Export Board. The details about the investments proposed by any of these countries will be shared and published by the Board of Investment.
About number of IT related experts in the country, the sources said the PSEB data revealed that there are approximately 110,000 IT professionals in the country at present where 24,000 IT experts and engineers are working in export oriented IT companies. The PSEB has conducted “Pakistan IT Market Revenue Estimation and Classification Study” in 2009-10 in which 75 prominent companies were surveyed, employing around 7500 full time staff. Overall, there are 1,800 IT and IT enabled services companies registered with the PSEB. However, field-wise information of IT experts and engineers is currently not available, the sources maintained. However, the sources claimed that the current pool of IT experts, engineers available in the country is not sufficient to meet the domestic requirements. The PSEB has undertaken many initiatives to harness the talent and provide full support to IT Industry. Some of these steps are: deployed 5,100 IT graduates and final year students in IT Companies from Jan 2002 to Nov 2011 where 90 percent interns secured jobs.
The PSEB has provided 788 apprentices to Information Technologies Companies from March 2006 to Jan 2010 and trained 9 000 IT professionals on Open Source Technologies from 2004 to 2010, it is learnt. During the outgoing year, 2011, the government through PSEB has trained 25 IT Professionals in Business to Business (B2B) Sales and trained 30 students from the underserved area of Pakistan in Gaming and Animation Development in the same year. The government through PSEB also provided specialized training to 60 professionals in graphics, animation and gaming from in the last four years and trained 189 IT professionals in PMP, Networks and System Security, Software Architecture, Oracle Financials and Siebel CRM. The sources further said that specialized training grant approved for 15 IT companies in the last four years and also trained 350 IT professionals in English language proficiency in the same period.
The PSEB is in process of establishing Centres of Excellence for Applied Software Technologies and Open Source (COEASTOS) in collaboration with the academia and the industry to grow the skilled human resource pool for Pakistan’s IT Industry. The PSEB has also started an incubator programme with effect from Sep 2011. Incubator programme is a process where young IT graduates and professionals are being helped to form new companies and IT ventures. By now two teams have been housed at PSEB head office and the selection of five more teams is in progress.
The sources further said that the PSEB has also launched a revision in its existing Internship programme for the deployment of 5,000 more interns in the IT Industry and it is also initiating “Quality Certifications and Specialized Trainings programme for the IT Industry.” Through this programme 4-5 companies will be assisted in achieving CMMi and ISO 27001 Certifications, the sourced concluded.
Source: Daily Times
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