Islamabad : Caretaker Federal Minister for IT and Telecommunication Dr. Umar Saif addressing Pakistan’s First Mobile Summit 2024. Addressing the ceremony, his speech at the Pakistan Mobile Summit, IT Minister said Pakistan has a huge potential to excel in the field of Information Technology. Pakistan is the 7th largest market of cellular users in the world with 191 Million cellular connections. However, we import most of our mobile phones. We need to manufacture them locally and develop an industry to export made-in-Pakistan phones.
Today in our first Mobile conference, we shared a comprehensive plan to develop the industry. Pakistan has 33 handset manufacturers with a capacity to meet all of our local demand (25 million phones annually). We announced 3% R&D incentive for the industry to make them globally competitive in terms of price. We will also be announcing a plan to manufacture components in Pakistan (local deletion policy) and make the locally manufactured phones cheaper than imported phones using a tariff deferential policy. Our cellphones exports can grow to a Billion dollar industry in the next few years. Shortly, people will also be able to buy phones on instalments via cellphones financing schemes.
Today is a momunental day for the Pakistan telecom and IT industry. Three important milestones achieved today in collaboration with PTCL, SCO, PTA, De CIX, PEACE Cable and China Mobile:1. We have reached an agreement for China to start routing their Internet traffic through Pakistan — making Pakistan a regional hub for connectivity. This will earn Pakistan huge revenue for Internet transit traffic. 2. Etisalat has setup Pakistan’s first carrier-neutral IXP and Data center in Pakistan to strengthen the reliability of internet connectivity. 3. PTCL will work with DE CIX German data center and IXP operator to run the operations of this new data center. Bringing a world-class data center operator to Pakistan will now enable us to both bring super-scaling cloud services such as AWS, Google Cloud and Azure to Pakistan and provide a local content hub for content services such as YouTube, TikTok and Netflix. 4. Pakistan’s internet users can now access services locally and Pakistan can become a hub of regional connectivity.Besides the IT Minister, mobile phone manufacturers, SIFC officials, and leading figures in the telecom industry attended the summit. Prominent names, including Muzzafar Hayat Piracha, CEO Airlink, Major General (R) Hafeez ur Rehman, Chairman PTA, Fatima Asad-Said, CEO ABACUS, Aamir Allawala, CEO Transsion TECNO Electronic, Muhammad Imran Saleem, Country GM, Careem Pakistan, Ehsan Saya, Managing Director, Daraz, Mr. Anwar Kabir, CEO Brand Spectrum, and others, graced this event.