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According to a recent report, the product and services exports from the IT sector of Pakistan show less than expected growth this year.
The recent report which comprises of export data taken from the first four months of the current fiscal year shows that the IT exports from Pakistan weren’t able to meet the expected growth rate targets. The statistics as made available through State Bank of Pakistan show that the growth in the Telecommunications, Computer, and Information Services sector of Pakistan stood at 5.34%, a rate which is lesser than what was originally being anticipated by the industry veterans.
The export receipts from Pakistan stood at $355 million, during the first four months of the current financial year which started July. These receipts show a year-on-year increase in the IT-related exports standing at 5%. The exports value from the same period last year stood at $337 million. During the last year, the Pakistani IT exports had shown a growth of 13% during the whole financial year.
On a rather good note, the IT-related imports showed a decline as more reliance went towards indigenous produce of ICT-related services and products. The imports have decreased from $163m to $147 showing a decrease of 9.8%. It must be mentioned here that the facts presented in this report account for the trades with receipts and apart from this a lot of informal trade also happens between Pakistan and the rest of the world.
The lesser increase in the exports could be credited to decrease in the value of Pakistani rupee against the dollar. The rupee has depreciated greatly this year as the fiscal deficit in Pakistani reserves and trade increased as the financial year started. This means even if the amount of services/products from this category has increased, the, overall value of the exports didn’t progress much.
