The state of IT education

The Information Technology (IT), IT Enabled Services (ITES) and IT education sector has been among the fastest growing in Pakistan’s economy. IT exports for 2021-22 are expected to clock in at around $3.5 billion, up from $2.1 billion the previous year, a massive 66 per cent increase.

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Over the last 15 years, in most years, annual export growth of the IT & ITES sector has been solidly in the double digits. Fully developed, this sector has the potential to become a huge contributor to the foreign exchange needs of the country. During this time, at different times, successive governments have exhibited various degrees of support (by introducing policy reforms). Indifference and neglect (by inaction), and at times greed (by milking the cow prematurely by significantly raising taxes) towards it.

What is more, the Board of Investment’s (BOI) data of forex earned from exports vs forex spent on imports. By the IT sector from 2006 to 2019 shows how incremental additional forex spending has coincided with a disproportionately larger increase in exports.

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In August of last year, the Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@SHA) issued its Salary Survey 2021. A detailed report that goes well beyond documenting compensations of a wide variety of roles in Pakistan’s IT industry. The data is sliced by location, roles, experience level, company size, company types, gender.

Despite the mushroom growth of computer science and related programmes in colleges and universities over the past few decades. The IT and ITES sector still faces a shortage of skilled, capable professional workers.