ICT

Recent initiatives of Govt of Pakistan in ICT Sector: Software Industry.

Abstract:

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) plays a pivotal role in the socio-economic development of any country. It contributes not only in the economical development of a society but also creates job opportunities for them. It is also a source of technology transfer from one country to another. During last ten years, Pakistan’s ICT sector has been developed rapidly. Especially in last five years it has shown rapid growth in Telecom and Software development. Due to these developmental activities new areas of jobs has also been introduced like Network administrator, Application developer, IT professionals, webmaster, System administrator etc. Similarly, Software Industry of Pakistan has gone through dramatic changes during last ten years. Due to government’s liberalized IT policy, a mushroom growth of Software houses has been registered in ICT Sector. This study analyzes that what factors were involved in the rapid development of Pakistan software industry in the past ten years and what were the initiatives taken by the government to facilitate the developmental activities. It also finds out that whether these developmental activities are stable or not. This study has been conducted through a comprehensive literature review comprising official document of IT policy, relevant research journals, surveys conducted by national and international organizations, ICT indicators and annual reports of public/private organizations. In this study, it has been found that in spite of political and economical instability Pakistan Software Industry able to maintain its consistent growth during last ten years due to the recent initiatives taken by government in the ICT sector. Government is taking significant initiatives to develop ICT culture in country and lots of incentives have been given to software houses to start business in software field. But government has continuously failed in enforcing the anti piracy laws and bearing lose of several billions of dollars every year. Pakistan also facing security problem which is discouraging the flow of outsourcing business which needs to be improved on immediate basis.

Key words:

Software house, Business Process Outsourcing, Internet Service Providers, Hacking, Teledensity, IT Enabled Services, Software piracy.

1. INTRODUCTION

In developing countries, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has become a part of the basic service basket such as education, health, and employment opportunity, and providing new means to access to basic social needs and provides opportunities for income generation. ICT has now been mainstreamed into every aspect of industrial and economic activity in the country. The increased role of ICT in industry and business in driving down costs, improving productivity, reducing time to market and providing quality services to their customers.

Pakistan always has a political and economical instability but still ICT sector is able to maintain its gradual growth. Similarly during last five years Pakistan software industry has shown rapid growth in its infrastructure. Today, it is offering various competitive advantages over other countries such as high quality software development, swift and easy establishment of business, lowest cost basis, emerging and state-of-the-art telecommunication and IT infrastructure. This paper will provide a comprehensive analysis of its rapid development on the basis of recent initiatives taken by government in the ICT sector focusing on software industry.

SOFTWARE INDUSTRY OF PAKISTAN

   

Pakistan software industry comes under the Ministry of Information Technology which was established in November 2002. To facilitate its activities, government of Pakistan has been proactively playing its role since past several years. The State Bank of Pakistan in its statement for the year 2006-07 reported the export figures of software industry and IT-enabled services to be $116 million which show a consistent annual growth (PSEB, 2007-08). Pakistan’s IT industry exports are estimated at $1.4 billion (PSEB, 2008) while the industry size is estimated at $2.8 billion (PSEB, 2008). It has been referred to the PSEB report that there are 1082 active IT companies in the country out of which around 110 are ISO certified while over 25 companies are undergoing CMMI assessment currently. The country has 110,000 IT professionals including several thousands of expatriates from North America and Europe with world class exposure and expertise and the large public R&D infrastructure of Pakistan employs over 15,000 IT professionals in Defence and other areas.

pre 1999 developments

Initiatives to establish Software Industry

The story of software industry in Pakistan starts with the establishment of IT infrastructure which was started in 1957 when “Ali group” set up a company named “Packages Limited” in Lahore as joint venture with Sweden Company. They used IT for their office work but at that time import of computer was not opened (Ministry of Industries & Production, 2004).

The first time use of IT from government side started in 1964 when government established a computer center in Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) office in Lahore with IBM computers and then the Quaid-e-Azam University Islamabad, Atomic Energy Commission, University of Engineering & Technology Lahore and PIA-Karachi also acquire IBM Mainframe Computers (Ministry of Industries & Production, 2004). In 1980s, personal computers brought a revolution in computing environment of Pakistan. Then realizing the global revolution in Information technology, government of Pakistan liberalized the hardware & software imports in 1985 and custom duties on electric goods were reduced (Ministry of Industries & Production, 2004).

In 1990s, PC Servers became famous and in 1991-92 heavy custom duties were completely removed which resulted IT revolution in Pakistan. In 1991, 90% landlines were converted to digital lines and Internet was introduced for the first time in 1995. The condition of Software Industry was very feeble. Country had very few software houses which were established in 80’s (Ministry of Industries & Production, 2004). Realizing the importance of Information and Communication Technology, Government of Pakistan started to support the IT services in country as a result of it, several public and private organizations established. Government also revitalized its Science Policy of 1984 and introduced it as National Technology Policy in November 1993 under Ministry of Science and Technology. The policy was devised for the purpose of coordination and for the facilitation of research and development in the institutions. Government took several important initiatives during the period of 1970 to 1998 in which several public and private organizations were formed and several other important events took place which played an important role in the development of the software industry (Ministry of Industries & Production, 2004). Few of the important activities as per report under discussion are given below;

1.     Establishment of Pakistan Computer Bureau (PCB) in 12^th January 1971.

2.     Establishment of Computer Society of Pakistan (CSP) in 1973.

3.     Pakistan Software Houses Association (PASHA) was founded in 1992 by nine Software Houses.

4.     National Technology Policy was devised by Govt. of Pakistan in November 1993.

5.     Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) established in 1995 for encouraging the software export in country.

6.     Software market boosts up in 1996 and introduced Internet for the first time.

7.     Declaration of Software and Information Technology as an “Industry” by notification on March 1997.

During the period 1995 to 1998, Pakistan had very few software houses which were the main source software production. The number of software houses from 1995 to 1998 shown in table 4.1.1.

TABLE 1: Showing the registered number of Software Houses (1995-1998)

Year of Registration	Name of Organizations
	PASHA	SBP	PSEB	OTHERS	Yearly Total
	Nos.	Nos.	Nos.	Nos.
1995	6	1	4	7	18
1996	-	1	13	1	15
1997	3	5	12	-	20
1998	4	5	20	6	35
Grand Total					88

Source: Experts Advisory Cell, Ministry of Industries and Production May 2004

The data shown in table 4.1 is gathered from P@SHA, SBP and PSEB because Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS) started to conduct census of Pakistan Software Industry in year 2002 (Ministry of Industries & Production, 2004). In pre 1999 conditions, software industry of Pakistan was also facing a major problem of unavailability of statistics or data. Software houses and other officials were well aware of it. Due to this problem several investors were uninformed about the performance of Pakistan’s software industry. It was also an obstacle for future developments (Osama, 2007). But now this problem has almost resolved because several private and public organizations are collecting, analyzing and publishing the data regarding industry’s performance on yearly basis.

Initiatives to boost IT Infrastructure

In 1980 to 1990, the focus of government policies was on the creation of diversified industrial sector and development of technical capabilities which recently shifted towards liberalized economy and building up ICT infrastructure (Haroon, 2002). In 15^th December 1990, government took its first initiative towards telecommunication by converting Telegraph & Telephone (T&T) department into Pakistan Telecommunication Corporation (PTC) (Haroon, 2002). In 1995, Pakistan had an average infrastructure of telecommunication which could not help Pakistan to boost up its activities to establish software industry. In 1995, Pakistan had only 1,500 internet users (PTA, 2002-03), which increased rapidly in 1998 reaching 100, 000 users (PTA, 2002-03) after the revolutionary initiative taken by government on 1^st January 1996 (Haroon, 2002) by reorganizing PTC in form of PTA, NTC and PTCL (see table 4.2.1).

TABLE 2: No. of Internet Users (1995-1998)

Year	No. of Internet users
1995	1,500
1997	25,000
1998	100,000

Source: PTA Telecom Status Report 2002-2003.

Initiatives to reduce Software Piracy

Pakistan always had an uncontrollable problem of Software piracy. Reducing software piracy could create hundreds of thousands of new jobs, billions in information technology (IT) spending and economic growth, and new tax revenues to support local services but unfortunately its rate always been high and gave huge losses.

Before 1999, Copyright protection was generally provided under the Copyright Ordinance 1962 which was not enough to tackle this problem (International Intellectual Property Alliance, 2007). It had strong administrative tools to fight piracy but had low criminal fines, which were not enough to deter piracy. Even it had no provision for minimum jail sentences/fines related to cyber crime. It might be the one of the reasons through which it becomes impossible for the administration to stop piracy from its earlier stage. Finally it was amended in 2000 (International Intellectual Property Alliance, 2007). The rate of piracy and amount of loss from 1996 to 1998 is shown in table 3.

TABLE 3: Software Piracy Rate (1996-1998)

Year	Piracy Rates	Revenue Loss
1996	92%	$ 23,144
1997	88%	$ 20,395
1998	86%	$ 22,667

Source: Business Software Alliance www.bsa.org

 DEVELOPMENTS IN 1999

The year 1999 was a crucial year for IT/Software industry in Pakistan. In this year the effects of government’s pre 1999 initiatives started to emerge. Pakistan was having an average infrastructure of ICT. Internet was available in 29 cities and teledensity was growing at reasonable pace, reached to 2.2% and mobile density was also grown to 0.25% (Ministry of Industries & Production, 2004). The rate of registration of software house and other IT companies was 49 and industry was generating revenue of US $18.2 Million from export (Ministry of Industries & Production, 2004). According to PTCL, PTA and PSEB that the number of Internet users was increased from 100,000 in 1998 to 250,000 in 1999 showing consistent growth, 68 Internet service Providers (ISPs) were providing services and 72 cities were connected with fiber optic cable, summarized in table 4.  

Table 4 showing 1999 IT infrastructure

Area	Potential (1999)	Source
Software Houses (total)	49	MoIP
Software Export	US $18.2 Million	MoIP
Internet Users	250,000	PTCL, PTA, PSEB
No. ISPs	68	PTCL, PTA, PSEB
No. of Cities (Fiber Optic)	72	PTCL, PTA, PSEB

POST 1999 DEVELOPMENTS

Initiatives to boost Software Industry

In year 2000, Pakistan has been able to develop its Software Industry rapidly on the basis of its Telecom sector. With this rapid development, It has not only been able to establish its IT infrastructure but also able to create awareness of science and technology among the people of its society (Ministry of Industries & Production, 2004). In the past 1999 initiatives government devised liberalized IT policies to facilitate the process of establishing new software houses and provide incentives to software houses to start their business in software field. Due to these initiatives new flavors of jobs like specialized IT professionals, Software developers, IT consultants, Networks administrators, Database Administrators, Application Developers etc had been introduced. Beside all these, initiatives to enhance technical services like networking, high speed internet connectivity, bandwidth size, system support, number of ISPs etc also been taken. Government also took initiative to establish IT parks and Electronic Governance at administrative level.

Initiatives to promote Software and Internet

To promote software based activities and internet services government introduced 20-50% reduction on the leased lines for ISPs for software exporters and concessions to Schools, universities & institutions, 50% up-front and 20 free hours for Internet usage. Government also introduced packages of unlimited local calls, fiber optic/digital cross connected system in major cities to segregate telephony and Internet traffic to bring Internet away from time metering. Beside these second high capacity fiber optic link also been introduced which was commissioned in 1998 (catering 20 new cities). Investment of US$ 40 (M) was made in SEA-ME-WE-III project (operational in July 1999) to enhance capacity. Internet infrastructure project (phased over three years 1998-2000) cost Rs.700 million launched to cater for 500,000 customers (90 cities including all district towns). Custom duty on the telecom & Internet equipment reduced and waiver granted from 25% CED on leased lines given to licensed ISPs & Software Exporters.

Incentives offered to IT Industry

In order to promote its IT industry, the government of Pakistan has provided several incentives to investors in which major benefits are the tax holidays for 15 years for IT companies and 100% foreign equity ownership (PSEB, 2007-08). Because of these incentives, an increasing number of foreign IT companies have chosen Pakistan for their outsourcing operations. On the whole, the government of Pakistan offered matchless incentives and numerous facilities to the private sector companies (PSEB, 2007-08). These include promotion of Information Technology Parks with low rent, fiber optic connectivity, libraries and conference rooms, provision of funds to software companies to achieve ISO-9000 certification and CMM/CMMI rating, 100% ownership of equity allowed to investing foreign IT/ITeS companies, tax exemption for IT companies till 2016, 100% repatriation of profits allowed to IT companies, seven year’s tax holidays for venture capital funds and minimum rate of 30% depreciation on computer equipment. The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) allowed the opening of Internet Merchant Accounts by banks and availability of instant, reliable and high-speed connectivity.

The above mentioned initiatives played significant role in strengthening the software industry. Ministry of Information Technology has also taken a number of initiatives for the promotion of ICT in different areas which includes the initiative of Electronic Government, training of Government employees, software industry development programs, institutional strengthening programs and IT related Human Resource Development programs.

Initiatives to reduce software piracy

On 17 January 2007, Federal Cabinet approved ‘The Prevention of Electronic Crimes Bill 2007'. This bill offers penalties ranging from six months imprisonment to capital punishment for 17 types of cyber crimes, including cyber terrorism, hacking of websites and criminal access to secure data. The bill deals with the electronic crimes included, cyber terrorism, criminal access, criminal data access, data damage electronic fraud, electronic forgery, misuse of electronic system or electronic device, unauthorized access to code, misuse of encryption, misuse of code, cyber stalking and suggest stringent punishment for offences involving sensitive electronic crimes (Pakistan Cyber Crime Bill, 2007).

NATIONAL IT POLICY

On 13^th August 2000, Federal Cabinet approved the National IT Policy and Action Plan with vision to harness the potential of IT as a key contributor to development of Pakistan. Eleven Working Groups worked in their respective areas during policy making process. The policy defined the role of Government as an enabler for IT based future economy. Following are the salient features of IT policy.

1.      Human Resource Development

The policy is focused to develop skilled human resource through short term training programs of blue collar IT workers, establishment of National Accreditation Council and Testing Service, Scholarships and Qaraz-e- Hasna schemes, free internet facility to public sector universities for education, strengthen faculty infrastructure of existing universities and computer training to all government employees.

2.      Telecommunication, Internet and Infrastructure

Telecom is an important sector in which, policy is focused to develop a modern countrywide Telecom infrastructure and make it affordable by encouraging active participation of private sector through accelerated deregulation. It is also included to launch a Geo Satellite to extend telecommunication-broadcasting facilities to remote areas within Pakistan and the neighbouring countries. It is also included to establish a chain of modern self-contained IT Technology Parks throughout the country. It is also part of the policy to increase Internet accessibility through the Universal Internet Access Program by lowering of bandwidth prices

3.      Efficiency & Transparency in Government

Policy has also emphasized to re-engineer the archaic Government Processes to improve efficiency by introduce IT to speed up the flow of information and track the processing, to convert data from paper to electronic form so that it is available on-line for improved transparency and accountability.

4.      Improve Services to Citizens

Government has also decided in this policy to introduce IT at the governmental level and make Government Information and forms available to citizens on-line for bring significant improvement in services like Bill Payment, Agency Specific Applications, Complaint Handling, etc and to eliminate the time spent by the citizens waiting in long queues.

5.      Stimulate the Domestic Economy

It is also the part of the policy to create jobs and to facilitate economic activates for economic growth. It also focused to apply IT services to traditional industry to increase its productivity, to create environment for the facilitation of e-commerce, automation of banks and in other sectors to improve the general business climate.

6.      Increase Exports

It is also part of the policy to generate a 50-fold increase in the direct export of IT and IT enabled services within

five years and to influence IT as well as help traditional export industry to become more competitive in the

international market and widen the export base with the help of an e-commerce infrastructure.

IMPACT OF POST 1999 INITIATIVES ON INDUSTRY

Software Houses/ IT Companies & Foreign Companies in Pakistan

After 1999, the number of software houses, IT companies and foreign companies increased rapidly because of

the incentives offered by the government of Pakistan to the IT companies. In 2006-07, PSEB recorded 285 IT

organizations in Islamabad, 357 in Lahore and 394 in Karachi which were 47, 64 and 82 respectively in 2000-01.

The number of foreign companies in 2006-07 increased to 60 which were only 6 in 2002-03 summarized in table 5

and 6.

TABLE 5: Software Houses/ IT Companies in Major Cities (2000-2006)

Year	Islamabad	Lahore	Rawalpindi	Karachi	Others	Total	Source
2000-01	47	64	14	82	16	223	MoIP
2001-02	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
2002-03	59	36	-	39	-	134	PSEB
2003-04	101	66	-	81	-	248	PSEB
2004-05	163	121	-	170	-	454	PSEB
2005-06	241	231	-	265	-	737	PSEB
2006-07	285	357	-	394	69	1105	PSEB

TABLE 6: Foreign Companies in Pakistan (2002-2006)

Year	Foreign Companies	Number in City
		Islamabad	Lahore	Karachi
2002-03	6	1	2	3
2003-04	18	4	6	8
2004-05	37	11	11	15
2005-06	48	15	21	12
2006-07	60	22	15	23

Source: Pakistan Software Export Board 

FDI in Software Industry
Foreign Direct Investment is considered an important source of economic growth in this globalized world. In Pakistan, software industry is the part of IT industry, collectively FDI in IT industry is US $180.70 million in 2008-09 (SBP, 2009) (see chart A) where as Pakistan’s Software/BPO revenues reached to US $1200 million in 2007 (P@SHA, 2007). (See chart B).

It is expected that the trend of investment may continue in the next 5 years because Pakistan is consistently generating its export revenue from international market (IDC, 2007). During 2006-07 mostly the inflow of FDI was in IT services sector and it increased rapidly in the year 2007-08 where as the software development showed small amount of consistent growth unlike hardware development. Computer hardware manufacturing is extremely capital intensive industry. Presently, there is no computer hardware manufacturing activity in Pakistan in true sense. The reason is that imported hardware components are available in abundance and on fairly cheaper rates.

Operating Cost Comparison

Today, world is appreciating the skills and the potentials of Pakistani IT professionals. Now Pakistan has got the capacity to compete with the world leading companies and expand its share in the international market. If we compare the operating cost of USA and India to Pakistan in outsourcing business then we will find out that Pakistan is offering the lowest and cheapest operating cost in the international market (PSEB, 2007-08) (see table 7).

           

Table 7: OPERATING COSTS IN US, INDIA & PAKISTAN
US$ Cost per FTE (Full Time Employee)	USA	INDIA	PAKISTAN
Personnel	42,927	6,179	4,500
General & Admin Expense	8,571	1,000	800
Telecom	1,500	2,328	2,000
Property Rental	2,600	847	700
Depreciation	3,000	1,500	1,000
Total Expenses	58,598	11,854	9,000
Markup	0%	100-200%	100-200%
Total Price in Market	58,598	23,708 to 35,562	18,000 to 27,000
Source: The Buying Triangle, LLC, 2006

 Software Houses & IT Companies in Country (Pre 1999 vs Post 1999)

           

According to the data released by PSEB that it has recorded about 1105 rate of registration of software houses / IT companies 60 foreign companies in the year 2006-07. Their number has rapidly increased during 2006 (see table 8). If we compare both the periods pre 1999 and post 1999 then we will find out that the rapid development took place in post 1999 period as compared to pre 1999 period due to the serious initiatives taken by government of Pakistan.

TABLE 8: Showing the registered number of Software Houses/ IT Companies (1995-2006)

Pre 1999	Year of Registration	No. of SWHs/ IT Comps	Source
	1995	18	PASHA, SBP, PSEB, Others
	1996	15	PASHA, SBP, PSEB, Others
	1997	20	PASHA, SBP, PSEB, Others
	1998	35	PASHA, SBP, PSEB, Others
	1999	49	PASHA, SBP, PSEB, Others
Post 1999	2000	111	PASHA, SBP, PSEB, Others
	2001	118	PASHA, SBP, PSEB, Others
	2002	134	PSEB
	2003	248	PSEB
	2004	454	PSEB
	2005	737	PSEB
	2006	1105	PSEB

WEAKNESS OF INDUSTRY

Software piracy rate (Pre 1999 vs Post 1999)

Piracy is the issue which has been affecting IT industry since past several years. It is the issue having two perspectives which usually government ignores. On one side it is considered as international crime where as on other side it is a source of strength of IT industry in Pakistan. The later which is the important perspective has been ignored by government from past several years. Several IT professionals and software developers who are working in the software houses have trained themselves by using pirated softwares. In Pakistan it is good for students because they have not enough power to buy licensed softwares and if these pirated softwares would be banned then it is possible that these students will leave the IT education. This will certainly affect the future of IT industry in Pakistan.

When we consider piracy as crime then it is evidently proved from the statistics that government of Pakistan has continuously failed in enforcing the anti piracy laws. During the last ten years, software piracy did not show any decay in its rate which has always been more then 80% (see table 9.1.1). In 2006 Pakistan faced loss of USD 143 Millions due to piracy and violation of copyright laws (BSA, 2008). Recently Government of Pakistan has taken some initiatives to stop software piracy and violation of copyright laws by amending legislation in the areas of copyrights, patents, and trademarks. Copyright law in Pakistan was governed by the Copyright Ordinance 1962 (International Intellectual Property Alliance, 2008). These initiatives will take time to be enforced properly due lack of awareness among the people. But the alternative solution of this problem could be the government’s heavy investment as subsidy to reduce the cost of licensed softwares. This will make the licensed software CDs affordable for students and as well as for public.

TABLE 9.: Software Piracy Rate (1996-2007)

Year	Piracy Rates	Revenue Loss
1996	92%	$ 23,144
1997	88%	$ 20,395
1998	86%	$ 22,667
1999	83%	$ 18,913
2000	83%	$ 31,379
2001	83%	$ 11,429
2003	83%	$ 16,000
2004	82%	$ 26,000
2005	86%	$ 48,000
2006	86%	$ 143,000
2007	84%	$ 125,000

Source: Business Software Alliance www.bsa.org

Lack of security

Currently, Pakistan is dealing with security problems. Bomb blasts, terrorist incidents across the country, suicide bombings are serious threat for the IT industry of Pakistan. Software Industry is rapidly developing itself through outsourcing business but the security threat is continuously discouraging the flow of outsourcing business (Bokhari, 2009). The foreign companies which were showing phenomenal growth in 2006-07 (PSEB, 2008) have also been affected due to the unwillingness of foreigners to travel Pakistan to discuss business propositions and sign a contract (Bokhari, 2009). To overcome this situation it necessary for the government to devised a comprehensive policy to deal such security issues.            

Conclusion & Recommendations

Today, Pakistan’s software industry has matured enough to fulfill its domestic as well as international demands of software. It was started with low level investment and then developed itself gradually. In the beginning, it had the problem of unavailability of authentic statistics which was restricting industry to analyze its performance. This problem was resolved in 2004 when Federal Bureau of Statistics started to conduct census of Pakistan Software Industry. Now it is considered as the future outsourcing destination by the experts. It is earning US$1.4 billion by exporting IT services and having US$ 2.8 billion of total IT industry. It has become the third most popular global IT outsourcing destination in the world due to offering high quality software development services at low cost. Still there is a lot to be done because government is continuously failing in enforcing the anti software piracy laws. On one hand, violation of copyright laws giving billions of dollar loss every year and on other hand government is not being able to invest consistently in this industry due to political and economical instability, which it is facing from past several years.

Pakistan Software Industry is going in the right direction but it requires heavy investment by both public and private organizations. The problem of unavailability of statistics is no more and now industry can analyze its performance on regular basis.  Government of Pakistan has taken several initiatives to develop ICT sector during last ten years in which the revitalization of National IT Policy was a key initiative, which was approved by Federal Cabinet on13th August 2000. Government built several educational institutions, call centers, Software parks and IT and software training institutions in accordance with the IT policy. It has also introduced several IT training programs, several domestic/foreign scholarships and IT training to the government servants under Higher Education Commission (HEC) supervision. Introduction of e-governance system has also been introduced. To meet the growing demand of IT professionals several new private IT institutions has also been licensed. New IT universities are being established in the public sector. The buildings are being acquired through donations or by leasing at low rent. Establishment of seven new IT universities and departments with improved faculty and resources has been initiated.

If Pakistan wanted to be a successful software producing destination in future then it is necessary for the government to encourage the usage of licensed Software CDs. This will only be done when government divert adequate funding towards reducing the cost of licensed Software CDs and made them affordable for the public.

Pakistan software industry is improving consistently but to make this improvement sustainable it is necessary for the government to provide investors a secure and conducive environment where they can be able to run their business freely. It is recommended to Government of Pakistan to devise liberalized policies to make the current growth sustainable for future.  

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