Digitalisation can add $60 billion to Pakistan economy in next eight years: OICCI

• The OICCI has prepared a Digital Report 2022 titled.
• The OICCI Managing Committee presented the report to the President of Pakistan Dr Arif Alvi.
• The report covers suggestions on e-commerce, fintech, IT exports and web 3.0 technologies.

KARACHI: Digitalisation offers innovative employment prospects to 23 per cent of Pakistan’s population that falls in the 20 to 34 years of age group and can add $60 billion to the Pakistan economy within the next seven to eight years.

The Overseas Investors Chamber of Commerce and Industry (OICCI) has prepared a Digital Report 2022 titled, “Recommendations for Digital Transformation in Pakistan”.

The OICCI Managing Committee presented the Digital Report 2022 to the President of Pakistan Dr Arif Alvi, with an objective to set the country on its digital journey. The report covers suggestions on e-commerce, fintech, IT exports and web 3.0 technologies, etc.

The president showed his concern on the decline in business confidence influenced by the highly challenging political and economic situations during the last six months.

He also appreciated the OICCI for taking the lead in presenting recommendations to digitalise the economy.

The report offers key recommendations to the policymakers on various facets of the digital transformation of the economy, including suggestions for digital infrastructure and connectivity, government, private sector and mass digital usage, emerging web 3.0 technologies and the digital regulations to accelerate innovation in Pakistan.

According to a research report, a 10 per cent increase in broadband penetration results in increasing the GDP by 1.4 per cent.

Ghias Khan, president of the OICCI, emphasised that “Digitalisation can also help inclusion of the underserved population of the society, such as the far-flung areas of the country.

“Around 23 million children in Pakistan are out of school and we have less than one physician for 1,000 people. To help Pakistan overcome these issues, it is important to digitalise the education and health sectors in a phased manner, preparing the national electronic health records and arranging capacity-building workshops for the professionals,” he remarked.

The report also notes that in recent years, there has been tremendous development in digital financial services. However, Pakistan is still a cash-based economy with less than 5 per cent merchants accepting digital payments. Besides promoting digital mode of payments, the government also needs to encourage international e-commerce companies to set up their regional offices in Pakistan.

Indonesia worked on similar lines and now its e-commerce market size is worth $30 billion, which is expected to reach $54 billion by 2025 and supports 26 million jobs directly and indirectly.

M Abdul Aleem, chief executive and secretary general of the OICCI, said: “Digitalisation can bring a lot of efficiency to the government services, boost productivity and help improve the ease of doing business.

The Philippines can be a good example, where public service delivery was digitalised under the E-Government Master Plan (EGMP), which helped the country, ranked 95th position in EODB 2020 rating, registering an improvement of 29 notches.

“Our government should take the advantage of modern technologies such as machine learning, data analytics and artificial intelligence to improve competence in the public departments, document the economy and increase the tax revenues,” Aleem added.

Also Read

OICCI holds fifth women empowerment awards

KARACHI: The Overseas Investors Chamber of Commerce and Industry (OICCI) has strived...