Pakistan may earn billions of dollars from IT sector
ISLAMABAD- Pakistan can earn, billions of dollars by developing its information technology (IT) sector as is evident from the sharp growth path of Latin American countries.
Like Pakistan many countries in Latin America are faced with lack of sufficient funds to start new industries, and the report prepared by Price Waterhouse on job creation in Latin America has immediate relevance to Pakistan.
Latin America has recently become an important market fir IT and related products and services. Its total packaged computer software market is forecast to almost double in four years, from 3.54 billion in 1998 to $6.85 billion in 2002.
The region’s packaged computer software industry generated $ 3.54 billion in sales, 137,345 jobs and $1,24 billion in tax revenues in 1998 alone, revealed a study entitled “Contribution of the Software Industry to the Latin American Economics.”
Based on average market growth projections of 18 percent per year, it is forecast that this segment of the information technology industry will produce total employment of 193,735 and tax revenues of $ 2.40 billion by 2002, said the study conducted on behalf of the Business Software Alliance (BSA), a world-wide organisation dedicated to the eradication of software theft.
However, despite the impressive contribution of the packaged software industry, the growth of this market segment and the positive effects of the IT industry upon the whole Latin American economy are still being hindered by software piracy, it added.
Software piracy represents not only serious revenue losses for the industry, but hundreds of thousands of lost jobs and greatly diminished tax revenues, the study said adding, intellectual property protection directly benefits workers through new job creation and governments through increased public revenues.
Through illegal copying, the entire, manufacture, distribution and service chain loses out. When pirated software is manufactured, installed and sold, the low level of economic activity that takes place, only benefits criminals and the black market, who do not pay, taxes on their illegal earrings, the report said.
Source: The Nation
Date:10/7/2000
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