Digital Pakistan : A Business and Trade Assessment
This report analyses the recent trends in Pakistani Information Technologies (IT) and InformationTechnologies enabled Services (ITeS), as well as obstacles confronted by firms. The authors assess the importance of trade costs as a barrier to servic...
| Main Authors: | , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Report |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2020
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/894921591073694322/Digital-Pakistan-Economic-Policy-for-Export-Competitiveness-A-Business-and-Trade-Assessment http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33880 |
| Summary: | This report analyses the recent trends
in Pakistani Information Technologies (IT) and
InformationTechnologies enabled Services (ITeS), as well as
obstacles confronted by firms. The authors assess the
importance of trade costs as a barrier to services growth
and development in Pakistan’s domestic market and to seizing
the opportunities of global trade. The report also aims to
understand and examine the impact of obstacles (i.e., trade
costs) confronted by firms. These obstacles increase the
costs of selling services and may reduce capacity to compete
both in the local market (Pakistan) as well as overseas
(exports). These obstacles include direct costs generated by
policy barriers that limit market entry, but can also
include infrastructure deficiencies, geographical location,
and institutional capacities, and/or obstacles imposed by
regulatory measures. Among the latter obstacles, examples
include difficulties in accessing the information necessary
to operate in a market, the predictability and stability of
the business environment in a market, and the quality of the
decision-making process and administrative procedures of
competent authorities in the domestic and export markets.
The focus of the report is the trade costs confronted by IT
and ITeS firms. IT and ITeS operations are the backbone to
provide digital services, digital goods and depend on
digital technologies, conform an integral part of the
overall ecosystem. The report relies on a survey conducted
on 782 IT and ITeS firms across different cities. The
objective of the survey was to examine the importance of
these factors for Pakistani firms and to provide advice to
policymakers. To complement the survey results, the main
findings were discussed in focus group structured
interviews. Firms interviewed covered different services
activities beyond software companies and included both
exporters (534 firms) and non-exporters (248 firms),
reflecting the export competitiveness as well as domestic
competitiveness of Pakistan's IT services sector. The
analysis aims to improve our understanding of
Pakistan's IT performance and the obstacles confronted
in this field. |
|---|