Daily Times

President Dr Arif Alvi on Wednesday said that Digital Transformation was at the heart of country’s vision to create a conducive environment for technology development and growth.

The president, talking to a delegation of DigitalOcean, led by its CEO Yancy Spruill, who called on him, said the conducive environment would include inviting and facilitating foreign investment in the IT sector and transforming the youth bulge into Information technology-savvy human resource for large-scale entry of the country into the fast-growing international IT market. This, he said, would help in building Pakistan’s image, harnessing its business potential and promoting the export of the country’s IT services and products around the world. President Alvi said that a high level of commitment, taking the right decisions at the right time and implementing policies and decisions on a time-line basis was needed both at the federal and provincial levels to create a well-integrated and functional IT ecosystem in Pakistan.

This would help fully capitalizing the vibrancy of the youth, improve Pakistan’s IT exports by further improving the investment climate and imparting speedy but quality IT computer programming, artificial intelligence and computing skills to huge youth bulge which was already contributing to the growth and progress of the IT sector in the country The president urged the need for the bureaucracy to assist all investors including foreign established and well-reputed IT firms and companies, keep their doors open, welcome investors warmly, help them complete their procedural requirements on a time-line basis and resolve their issues with due diligence on a top priority basis.

President Alvi said that the government was focusing to review the entire education system of the country to transform it from a non-market to a market-oriented system by imparting market-oriented knowledge, techniques, and skills to graduates to enable them to be readily absorbed in the market and play their role in the development of the country. The president appreciated DigitalOcean for investing in Pakistan by acquiring a Pakistani IT company at $350 million, which was the largest IT acquisition in the history of Pakistan.

He said that the step would help in the exponential growth of Pakistan’s IT companies, besides helping IT professionals and companies to promote and enlarge their businesses, services, and outreach. The president emphasized that DigitalOcean should take tangible steps for imparting high-quality training to the youth which would provide them with an excellent resource for their operations, besides helping the start-ups to scale up their existing ventures and encouraging other IT companies to benefit from the services of DigitalOcean.

He said that DigitalOcean’s slogan “IT for All” would help in the large-scale entry of Pakistan’s youth into the fast-growing international IT market, besides helping build Pakistan’s image, harnessing its business potential and promoting the export of the country’s IT services and products around the world.