IT sector looking for collaboration
KARACHI: The initiative to boost trade among South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) member countries through preferential and free trade pacts reached in January in Islamabad would definitely help improve the performance of various sectors of the economy, but opinions are divided over its impact on IT industry.
Presently, the IT and software industry is in the process of consolidation and organizational overhauling and it is hoped that collaboration with the member states especially with India – the fastest IT growing industry in the SAARC region – would bring more opportunities for us to explore markets of smaller members like Nepal, Bhutan, etc.
President of Pakistan Software Houses Association (PASHA) Ms. Jehan Ara talking to Dawn said that this initiative would help IT industry to prepare for the tough competition with regional rivals, besides it would give opportunities to make its presence in other markets in the form of collaboration, exchange of expertise and know-how.
Dispelling a general impression that Indian IT industry with annual software exports of approximately $13 billion was a threat to the local IT industry, the PASHA president said that one should not be afraid of the higher export figure of Indian export as it enjoys only 2.5pc share of the total software exports of the world. “India would not like to compete with us in our local market segment, instead together we can grab a larger chunk of the world market,” she added.
Responding to a query, she said they were looking into opportunities for collaboration, but it was too early to identify areas of cooperation and joint ventures.
When asked what role the two governments should play to take benefit of opening up of trade, she said, “both the governments should just provide us opportunity to continue our interaction.”
About impressive progress India has made in IT and software industry she said that India’s IT industry was older than Pakistan and it had the advantage of being a big country having investment and active marketing by Indians in different parts of the world, especially in North America.
Another reason was branding of India both at the public and private sector. “Whereas our major problem has been the non- availability of funds to invest in IT sector. We need to create a brand for Pakistan.”
The president, Internet Service Provider Association of Pakistan (ISPAK), Ansarul Haq doubts that opening up of trade would make any positive impact on IT and software industry.
“We never try to excel in IT field and the result is that we are still at zero.” Highlighting some of the reasons this state of affairs he said: “we never set targets and have no direction as well as we never try to adopt strict code of curriculum and there is dearth of highly qualified faculty.”
He said the Indian IT sector was far ahead and this could be judged from the fact that its software exports were near to $13 billion whereas “ours are hardly $20 million.” He said the reason for this big difference was that “we are not producing quality IT professionals.”
He said the private IT universities and institutions were not producing quality human resources because the curriculum was not up to international standards and did not meet the requirements of producing quality IT professionals.
He said when Indian software exports were $4 billion its domestic demand was $1 billion and “if we want to enhance our exports we have to first increase our domestic demand.”
Though in the past few years there was a mushroom growth of universities in the country, which produced thousands of software engineers annually for few opportunities, thus a brain-drain was on the rise.
Source: Dawn
Date:3/21/2004
” 
” 
” 
” 
” 
