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Local traders in the Information Technology industry have decided to quote prices in US dollars. They have decided to do this for the sake of foreign customers to help the traders to make profits after the recent depreciation of the rupee against dollar.
The news has been announced through a letter by top players of IT industry includes Premier Systems, IBL Unisys, JBS, Silicon Technologies, Abacus Consulting and InfoTech. They sent the letter to their customers to inform them about the new decision.
All the key traders of hardware and software reached a contract to quote prices of all products in dollars, as all the renders are importing their services and products in dollars and get paid in Pakistani rupees. That cause them huge losses because the exchange rate is unstable and the difference is getting wider.
In the letter they mentioned that “Hardware and software infrastructure industry of this country have decided that from now onwards they will quote only in US$ payable in PKR using the inter-bank conversion rate as on the date of payment.”
Before the 35% drop in rupees in last year against the US dollar, price quotations in rupees were affordable. CEO of JBS Veqarul Islam said “In this situation, the survival of business is difficult,” he added that the IT industry in Pakistan was already doing business with limited profit margin, but now the profit has fallen in between 1-4% only. He said “Many companies have endured heavy losses due to the rupee fluctuation.”
Pakistan does not only import in the IT industry but also exports the locally produced services. However, that is almost negligible. The CEO said “In Pakistan, we mainly trade and do not produce, For example, we buy license of any software from Microsoft, Oracle or any other company in dollars and sell it to local users.” In this transaction, the manufacturer made the real money but not the trading business, he argued. “In the trading business, there will be six competitors selling the same software license and all will try to lure customers by giving up their profit margins.”
Pakistani traders are making significant profits. It is Pakistan’s IT production that is making money, despite being small in number.
