ISLAMABAD ( BMZ REPORT )
H.E Ms.Heather Cruden, Canadian High Commissioner to Pakistan called on Minister of state for IT and Telecom, Mrs Anusha Rahman at Ministry of IT and discussed matters of mutual interest with special reference to enhancing bilateral relations between the two countries.
The Minister apprised the Canadian Envoy regarding ongoing projects of the Ministry including Telecenters projects, special projects ICT for girls, projects for the dewellers of unserved and underserved areas and establishment of state of the art technology parks which is being built with the assistance of Korean Exim Bank.
Anusha Rahman, informed the Canadian High Commissioner that through the Universal services Fund Co., more than 4000 km optic fiber has been laid in the difficult terrain of Baluchistan and rural telephony projects have been initiated to provide telecommunication connectivity in far flung areas of KPK and Baluchistan. While talking about the local manufacturing, the Minister said that our government has offered special incentives to promote local manufacturing of smart phones. Haier Group of companies has recently got NOC to establish the first smart Mobile phones assembling plant. Canadian telecom manufacturing companies can also invest in our rapidly growing sector and could get benefit from these special incentives.
Minister also invited Canadian companies to look at the Software development sector of Pakistan having IT Software exports touching around $2Billion.
Minister further said that its our utmost desire to create an “eco-System” for ICT in Pakistan so that we could materialize our dream of “Accelerated digitization”.
Canadian High Commissioner appreciated the vision of the Pakistan government and hailed the efforts of the Ministry of IT and telecom for the nourishment of the sector. Both sides agreed to enhance the mutual cooperation in arena of IT and telecom to explore new avenues of mutual cooperation in near future.