ISLAMABAD -  Information and Technology (IT) Minister Anusha Rehman on Wednesday held a strategic session with Industry leaders to increase IT exports to $10 billion by 2020.

While meeting the industry leaders in the wake of “Strategic Session to boost IT Exports”, Anusha outlined the government’s vision to facilitate the industry to reach its true potential. She emphatically urged upon the leaders from the Industry to chart out a comprehensive action plan with the government outlining tangible outcomes to achieve the avowed target of $10 billion by 2020.

The session was attended by wide array of senior leaders from the IT industry. They have shown their resolve to achieve this target through concrete measures. They echoed the minister’s trust and faith on Pakistan’s talent landscape which require honing to tap into its true worth for Digital Pakistan.

The minister said, “Time is ripe to take Pakistan’s economy forward through knowledge economy. Pakistan is well positioned to take its due pie from the international IT market. Our Government is steadfastly committed to provide enabling environment for the industry in the shape of IT centric policies, HR development and infrastructure provisioning. We are all up to help bridge the gaps between the talent and industry alongside building an environment of trust and openness to help enable the growth of software exports.”

The PASHA chairman shared a comprehensive plan to increase the IT exports through various measures in the shape of public-private partnership model. The first and foremost is the right reporting mechanism where IT Industry’s true size of over $3 billion is to be reflected through proper channels, he said. This right reflection will help position Pakistan’s industry in international market to allure the international companies for building businesses with Pakistan, he added. The proposal to build public-private partnership model to build infrastructure for IT companies on cost effective propositions were also discussed.

The minister assured support on behalf of the government in the shape of policies, infrastructure provisioning, HR development and transforming the culture of public sector. She outlined the plan of providing class room based technical trainings in emerging fields like IoT, robotics, analytics, cloud etc along with communication and selling skills to young graduates. This is in supplement of the plan of training one million youth through digital skills programme by Ignite. She further said that the prime minister has constituted a Digital Transformation Committee to supervise, implement and monitor the vision of Digital Pakistan and its associated programmes across the country.

The Industry leaders thanked the minister for her keen interest towards the uplift of the sector and vowed to join hands with the government to steer forward all initiatives in a spirited manner to achieve the true potential of Pakistan’s IT sector for a growing Pakistan.