Software development employs 42.4 percent of Pakistani freelancers, which accounts for 10.5 percent of all software development freelancers worldwide. According to the World Bank, this is significantly greater than Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, but lower than India.
The Pakistan Software Export Board has currently registered 4,641 IT enterprises and 4,066 contact centres, according to the bank’s newest study “At Your Service? The Promise of Services-Led Development.” More than 300,000 IT specialists are employed in the business, which is concentrated in three major cities: Lahore, Karachi, and Islamabad.
According to a survey of 300 IT firms conducted by the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication’s National ICT R&D Fund (now known as “Ignite”), 14 percent of the enterprises had 50 or more employees, 17 % had 25 to 50 employees, and the rest had less than 25 employees.
The sector is dominated by domestically owned businesses with only a few international activities. Only one of the top ten exporters is international, despite the fact that at least 13 percent of the companies examined were foreign.
Pakistan, on the other hand, has a significant worldwide IT presence, with companies such as IBM, Oracle, and Cisco, to name a few.
The report also stated that Pakistan’s ICT services exports have increased at a compound annual growth rate of 10.8 % per year, rising from $433 million in fiscal year 2009-10 to more than $1 billion in fiscal year 2018-19, with the United States accounting for 52 percent of telecommunications, computer, and information services exports, followed by the United Arab Emirates at 8.8 percent, and the rest going to other countries.
Between 2009-10 and 2018-19, the share of computer-related services in these ICT services exports climbed from 44% to 73%, with an average annual growth rate of 17.3%.
According to the study, exports of low- to medium-value-added software services including application development, enterprise planning, and integration are concentrated in the computer-related services industry. In addition, there is a scarcity of product development activities.
