Pakistan’s Information and Technology (IT) industry is flourishing. Though the IT sector in Pakistan remained unexplored for years, the industry’s overall growth in the past years has been striking. IT exports during July-March FY2022 surged to US $1.948 billion at a growth rate of 29.26 percent in comparison to US $1.5 billion in the same period last year, according to the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP)’s data.
Read more: Pakistan’s IT industry makes record service exports
Government’s enabling policies have played a major role in the remarkable growth of this sector. These include several sustainable development and accelerated digitization projects, incentives to bolster growth, including 100pc equity ownership and specialized foreign currency (FCY) accounts for IT/ITeS firms and freelancers to fulfil operational demands, thus addressing a long-standing concern of IT companies regarding the easy inflow/outflow of foreign currency.
There has been a tremendous increase in number of freelancers working from Pakistan. The trend emerged during Pandemic when people lost their jobs and had to stay at homes.
Currently, Pakistan has the fourth-largest growing freelancers’ market internationally. The country is known for software development, business process outsourcing (BPO) and freelancing of IT-related services.
Pakistan's IT sector!
300,000+ English-speaking IT workers
2000+ IT businesses and call centers, 13 software technology parks
20,000+ annual IT graduates and engineers.
Growing startup culture.
Freelancing, BPO, and software development are the three main growth sectors.— Economy of Pakistan (@Pakistanomy) August 10, 2022
Unfortunately, the sector suffers from security issues, political instability, and inconsistent policies. Despite of these challenges, the country’s IT sector has grown exceptionally. While traditional businesses require large investments in heavy machinery, infrastructure, tools, and specialized labor, the IT sector does not.
Read more: Pakistanis’ most demanded skills by American companies
No heavy investment requirement has worked in favor of the country as it is blessed with innovative and talented young minds who are flexible to take advantage of the changing dynamics in the world.
Top five freelancing sites in Pakistan are Fiverr, Freelancer.com, Upwork, PeoplePerHour, and Guru.
Moreover, there is an increasing trend of becoming a “virtual assistant” for national and international sellers at Amazon, Daraz and AliBaba. Pakistan government has introduced an online learning platform named ‘Pakistan Freelance Training Program’ offering wide-ranging courses to enable youth to learn and sell high-earning services.
Since the skills of Pakistanis became known to the world, United States (US) based companies are looking to improve their software development skills, and they are turning to Pakistan to do so.