ISLAMABAD - For the promotion of Information Communication Technologies (ICT) sector in Pakistan, effective e-strategies should be devised while taking on board all the stakeholders including Government, IT industry, Telecom companies and academia through the utilisation of available resources. Secretary IT & Telecom, Naguibullah Malik, gave these remarks on Thursday while addressing a conference on Promoting ICT Sector organised by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) in collaboration with Motorola here at a local hotel. The conference was held in view of the importance of local contents and applications for future promotion of Information Communication Technologies (ICT) industry and infrastructure. Secretary IT drew attention of the participants to 4 main focus areas, which could give a boost to the development of ICT sector. Those areas included IT & Telecom education, research, entrepreneurship and local industries. He said that an efficient policy was mandatory to carry out productive work in these areas for which Government was working extensively and a new policy would be introduced soon. Chairman PTA, Dr Mohammad Yaseen said that they had around 97.6 million cellular subscribers with total teledensity reaching upto 63.5 percent but the sector was under-served as far as broadband was concerned. He further said that the key issue in the further development of data segment was non-availability of local contents and applications, which could contribute towards formulation of ICT-based economy. At present, Pakistans telecom sector is in dire need of establishing a strong link with academia and government should accelerate further technical excellence and entrepreneurship, he added. He said that they needed to encourage the participation of all stakeholders in this effort so that the issues, problems and the barriers faced by the industry in the promotion of ICT sector may be highlighted and addressed properly. In reference to its endeavours for the development of ICTs in Pakistan, Dr Yaseen said that PTA had taken number of initiatives to launch and promote new innovative solutions for the betterment of telecom industry and society and would continue its efforts till the set objectives were achieved completely. Through this conference, PTA had provided a unique platform to potential content providers to present their applications and ideas linked with ICT usage and development. In the conference, 9 local content providers displayed their applications, which were highly appreciated by ICT industry.