Pakistan’s minister for IT and Telecom, Syed Aminul Haque, has floated the idea of a ten-year tax holiday for freelancers, suggesting the move could improve the nation’s services exports.
The idea was mentioned in Pakistan's 2021 Draft Freelancing Policy [PDF] and the minister minister raised the idea again last week at a meeting of Pakistan’s Committee on IT Exports Growth, a forum whose name says a lot about what the nation hopes to achieve with the policy.
In 2020 Pakistan revealed a plan to grow tech services exports from $1.25bn to $5bn within three years.
Yesterday, the Ministry for IT and Telecom revealed good progress towards that goal.
The net #exports for the period July-December FY2021-22 are US$ 972 million which is 74.65% of US$ 1.302 billion in exports. Last year, for the same period the net exports were US$ 681 million which was 71.01% of US$ 959 million in exports.#MOITT #DigitalPakistan
— Ministry of IT & Telecom (@MoitOfficial) January 23, 2022
Those posts generated responses pointing out that Pakistan’s tech exports are less than one percent of neighbouring India’s. Pakistan also has a poor track record of creating companies to match the likes of Indian tech services giants Wipro, HCl, TCS or Infosys – all of which have substantial head starts in building global presences, methodologies, and alliances.
Pakistan has therefore focused on freelancers as its route to winning tech exports, suggesting that locals can use freelance platforms to start...
Read Full Story: https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/25/pakistan_considers_tenyear_tax_holiday/
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