On an average, just one IT professional can generate at least $30,000 of exports per year. In order to have an export of over one billion dollars, we need to have about 40,000 IT professionals fruitfully employed in Pakistan. It is our target to start producing 100,000 IT high quality graduates in Pakistan each year in order to have multibillion dollar exports.

Information Technology has opened up vast new avenues for developing countries such as Pakistan to use the creativity of their young through education and training and to make fuse use of their talented youth for national development.

In the last five years, we have seen explosive advances in this field. From a few hundred thousand pages which were on the Internet in 1994, there are now over a billion pages and these are being added to at the rate of about a million new pages a day! Electronic commerce, at present, is estimated to be about $70 billion and will increase some 20-fold over the next 24 months. Information Technology is often thought of as software exports. This is incorrect since in this day and age, it is all pervasive. In a recent report published by the US department of trade and commerce, it was stated that about 50 per cent of the acceleration in growth of the US economy during recent years was because of the integration of Information Technology in various industries, thereby dramatically improving the efficiencies, productivity and resulting in substantial cost benefits.

The United States has led in IT and Europe is following in its footsteps. Japan had initially ignored this important field, but has now realized its mistake and has launched a 5-year programme to catch up. Things are changing at a tremendous and mind-boggling pace in this field. Those countries which do not make use of this opportunity are likely to be left behind, thereby deepening the digital divide which already exists. At present, Pakistan is well placed with 140 million people, the majority of whom are below the ages of 30 and many are English speaking. We need to train a critical number of our youth in this important field and to provide them with opportunities at home to use their skills for a variety of IT-related programmes so that the country can forge ahead quickly. What is particularly attractive about Information Technology for countries such as Pakistan is the rapidity with which it can be adopted.

Other technologies usually involve massive infrastructure investments, sophisticated technologies and a critical number of highly qualified professionals. Let me take the example of the pharmaceutical industry, for purposes of comparison. It requires a huge effort involving medicinal chemists, pharmacologists, toxicologists, engineers, etc, to come together and a cost involvement of about a billion dollars before a single new drug can be marketed at an international level. Only the major world's pharmaceutical industries possess the vast technical and financial resources for drug development - that is why not a single new drug has been discovered and marketed independently by any of the third world countries. The field of Information Technology is largely free from these constraints. The key factor is training of human skills and providing them with opportunities for commercial development. When I took over as the federal minister for science and technology, I was surprised to discover that Pakistan had no IT policy or action plan. I, therefore, immediately called a meeting of IT professionals and gave them a 4-week deadline to come forward with the two documents: first the IT Policy and second, which I consider to be very important, an IT Action Plan which relates each clause of the IT Policy document with a corresponding actionable item in the IT Action Plan. These actionable items should be both time-bound and money-bound, so that it is quite clear what is to be done and how much it would cost. The first meeting of the IT Advisory Group was held on April 1, 2000, within two weeks of my taking charge as federal minister for science and technology and the first draft of the document was in my hand by April 28, 2000, reflecting the tremendous enthusiasm and hard work of the group members over this period of time. The Group comprised mainly private sector individuals since I had already decided that the IT policy must revolve around their needs and their vision. In this sense, therefore, it was a different policy. For once, it was not the government imposing its views on the private sector but the private sector itself coming out with what they felt was the way forward. Hence, it was need-driven from day one. I also established an Overseas Strategic Advisory Board in San Francisco, USA, headed by Masood Jabbar, President, SunMicro Computers. Other eminent personalities on the Board included Safi Qureshey, formerly head of AST; Sohaib Abbasi, senior vice president of Oracle and a number of other eminent IT professionals in USA. A similar group, called "Dareecha" was also established in New York under the leadership of Farrukh Zafar and both groups have been constantly advising us of what needs to be done.

Policy document: The "Policy Document" was made open to the public through Internet and went through some 20 different revisions over the next several weeks. It was finally approved by the Cabinet for implementation last summer. However, we did no wait for the IT Policy and Action Plan to be approved, but went ahead quickly to implement some of the key recommendations, as time was one commodity we could not afford to lose. Most importantly, the deliberations brought out the fact that Pakistan did not have the quality and quantum of human resources necessary to make a dent in this important field.

Export potential: According to one estimate, on an average, just one IT professional can generate at least $30,000 of exports per year. In order to have an export of over one billion dollars, we need to have about 40,000 IT professionals fruitfully employed in Pakistan. It is our target to start producing 100,000 IT high quality graduates in Pakistan each year in order to have multibillion dollar exports. However, as stated earlier, such an effort will only be useful if we can ensure quality of the output, if we are able to retain them within the country and provide them with suitable job opportunities and enabling infrastructure. It was clear that we had to invest massively in the development of our human resources so that we could develop the requisite number of highly trained IT professionals at different levels.

It was, therefore, decided that 60-70 per cent of the budget assigned by the government for the IT sector should go into the field of human resource development. We, accordingly, initiated a broad based programme including strengthening of our computer science departments so that we can produce a large number of highly qualified graduates, MScs and PhDs. Some 31 computer science departments in our universities are in the process of being strengthened. We have also embarked on a large number of short term training programmes to develop the basic computer skills of persons.

More jobs: The first batch of about 3000 data feed operators were trained and all got jobs within a month of the completion of their 8-week training. The next batch of 9000 persons is in the process of being trained across the country. A major programme in the field of training in medical transcription has been initiated. In the first instance, a nationwide programme has been launched to train the trainers in this field while the second phase of this programme involving training of medical transcriptionists themselves has also begun.

Interestingly, the availability of these trained medical transcriptionists is resulting in an important phenomenon - a large number of medical transcription companies in different parts of the country have emerged, thereby illustrating the fact that if the requisite human skills are available then the economic activity also follows. A national programme to re-train our unemployed science graduates, medical graduates and engineers in IT related fields through short courses such as JAVA, XML, C++, etc. has also been initiated. Through this programme a large number of the educated unemployed in the country can be provided fruitful opportunities for jobs.

We have also decided to set up several new IT universities but at the same time we decided that we will not invest government funds in construction but make use of existing campuses wherever they exist and convert them into IT universities. This is an important cornerstone of our policy since real progress is achieved not by constructing buildings but by unleashing the creativity of our young through a challenging educational system. For this we must develop quality institutions through the induction of highly qualified faculty members and through creation of world class libraries and facilities.

Accordingly, two existing institutes - COMSATS and FAST - were granted charters and they are in the process of being upgraded. Another organization, Petroman, which has some 11,000 students and 22 campuses across the country is being taken over by our Ministry and is being developed into a full fledged university. A large campus near Lahore which has 400,000 sq ft covered area located on some 300 acres of land is also being taken over for conversion into an IT university. Two universities in the private sector are also in the process of being developed.

Distance learning: The most exciting education programme, however, is the establishment of a Distance Learning University which will allow us to train hundreds of thousands of IT professionals in different parts of the country. Under this distance learning programme, high quality TV programmes will be prepared and then broadcast through the television across the country. It will also provide an opportunity for women to join this Distance Learning University and, sitting at home, take courses in various IT fields. A 3-hour slot has been made available on PTV for beaming these programmes. Another 6-hour slot will be provided from March 23, 2001, by Shaheen TV while a full fledged TV channel for IT and other science and technology programmes is also being established.

Quality testing: At the roots of these efforts lies the question of quality. Unless we can ensure a certain level of quality, the whole effort could be wasted. The government has, therefore, decided to set up a National Testing Service and a National Accreditation Council. The National Testing Service would test the standards across the country and provide a national scale on which the students from one institute can be graded against another institute. The National Accreditation Council would critically review the IT institutions and accredit those institutions which have adequate faculty and infrastructure. The government will urge the public to enrol students only in such accredited institutions so that certain basic minimum standards are assured and that they get paper value for the money which they are paying in the form of fee.

The present situation is quite alarming. Pakistan produces some 9,000 graduates in the field of Information Technology but a large percentage of these are substandard. We are, therefore, determined to quickly improve the standards of IT education. For this purpose, we are in the process of hiring faculty from abroad. We have already advertised for faculty in Financial Times in UK as well as in major IT related journals. Higher salaries are being offered and suitable faculty members will be inducted into our IT institutions so that quality of the IT education can be improved.

Building highways: It is also important to develop the necessary infrastructure and fast and large information highways could be established, far most important than cement highways. Pakistan now has about 100 per cent optic fibre backbone and we are in the process of spreading fibre from this backbone to various cities. Fibre rings are being laid around the major towns and cities of Pakistan so that high-speed Internet access can be made available quickly to key business and education localities. The last mile high-speed Internet problem is being addressed through using DSL and ADSL technologies which allow some 200 fold increase in transmission of information on existing copper lines. In rural areas wireless technology is being employed to spread Internet to places where the telephone system does not presently exist. Till August 17 last year, Internet was available only in 29 cities of Pakistan.

In a dramatic expansion, PTCL has succeeded in spreading Internet to over 325 towns, cities and villages within a short span of 4 months and by the end of December 2000 some 325 towns, cities and villages had been provided with Internet facilities covering about 80 per cent of the country. This expansion is unprecedented in the history of the growth of Internet in any country of the world and PTCL gets all credit of having done this in such a short period of time. It goes to show of what we Pakistanis are capable of if we set our mind to it!

A series of Internet kiosks are being established across the country at all major airports, railway stations, post offices etc. About 1,800 Internet kiosks are being established in different petrol pumps whereby a whole network of Internet facilities will become available across the country even in remote areas where a person who has no resources to buy a computer can walk into an Internet kiosk to receive or send an e-mail message, down load information from across the world, tap into the huge information bases in libraries, etc.

Why Pakistan? One question that we have been constantly addressing ourselves is "Why Pakistan?" Why should anyone invest in Pakistan when there are opportunities in countries such as Thailand, Singapore, UAE and other countries in the region. The answer is simple. We have to make it so financially attractive and so easy for investors that they are drawn magnetically by the huge investment opportunities available in the country. We, therefore, decided to remove bureaucratic hurdles for investment as well as create an extremely lucrative environment for investment. One key factor which we addressed was the issue of bandwidth costs. These were over $100,000 per megabyte per month about a year ago, and they have now been reduced to only $3000 per megabyte per month, making us by far the cheapest in the region, far cheaper then India, Singapore or UAE or for that matter any other third world country. This measure was accompanied by a large number of incentives which we have given to promote the IT area. These include 0 per cent income tax for the next five years on software houses, 0 per cent duty on computers and computers parts, the ability of software companies to retain 35 per cent of export earnings in foreign currency accounts, 50 per cent rebate on the income tax of IT professionals, the ready availability of loans to software houses on the basis of contracts which they have signed with foreign companies without the need of having any collateral, etc. These measures have transformed the entire country into a kind of export processing zone, and Pakistan is today the hottest place in any third world country to invest in the field of Information Technology.

The excitement and interest that these measures have created are reflected from the results which are now beginning to come through. In a major article, entitled "Pakistan's IT Push Paying Off", published in a Singapore newspaper, it was mentioned that Pakistan has now taken key measures to rapidly became a major player in Information Technology and the kind of incentives that we have given were highlighted. A 50-million dollar Venture Capital Fund has been created in the USA by a group of Pakistani IT professionals and entrepreneurs.

Foreign in vestments: Investments of over Rs12 billion have been announced in the last five weeks alone in the telecommunication and IT sector because of the steps that we have taken. Oracle is investing Rs120 million for setting up operations in Sindh, similarly CISCO has decided to set up a series of networking academies, IBM is investing in setting up 10 IBM training centres. CERN (Geneva) is in the process of setting up a large computer centre in Islamabad.

The first Call Centre has been set up in Lahore and started functioning last week, as a result of the decision of the government to allow Call Centres to be established freely in the country. A major telehousing project and a Voice-over-IP project are being set up under the auspices of PTCL. The opening up and liberalization of the sector is hence generating tremendous excitement among investors because Information Technology is the hottest growing world industry at the moment and the incentives and measures which we have taken have generated world wide interest.

We are in the process of setting up marketing offices across the world. A business incubator has already been established in Singapore, another marketing office and business incubator is being established in San Francisco, office space has been taken up in Tokyo to set up a number of business incubators there and a business incubator and marketing office is being established in London. These will provide our software companies with opportunities to establish marketing linkages with companies abroad.

A major programme has been also launched to promote e-commerce in the country. Internet merchant accounts have been allowed by the State Bank of Pakistan and a time frame has been given to the National Bank of Pakistan and Habib Bank of Pakistan so that e-commerce can become a normal mode of trading within this year. The necessary e-commerce laws have also been prepared and are now in the process of being vetted by the Law Division so that e-commerce laws can be implemented in the country.

A project for the electronic governance has been launched which includes a programme for training of government officials and computerization of the government so that a paperless government is possible. This will ensure transparency in procurement procedures as well as the ready availability of all relevant information to government officials.

A revolution is in the offing. I am determined to make it happen quickly. However, it is only a beginning. We have a long long way to go. I am confident in the creativity of our youth. All we need is the facilitating environment and I am confident that we will forge ahead, and Inshallah Pakistan will be a power to reckoned with in the field of Information Technology within 3-4 years.