Pakistan Lacks Vision to Achieve Targets of Digital Pakistan Initiative: GSMA

ISLAMABAD: The GSMA has said that Pakistan lacks vision and direction towards digitalisation to achieve the targets of the Digital Pakistan initiative.

Julian Gorman, head of Asia Pacific, GSMA, here on Thursday said that Pakistan has significant potential for digital growth as well as to become a leader in the digital economy due to large well-trained youth.

“However, the government apparatus as well as the essential services are not up to the digital potential available in the country, the e-governance adoption will increase the performance of the governments apart from making people more connected,” Gorman said.

He was speaking to the media to highlight the importance of holding the third “GSMA Digital Nation Summit” to be held in Islamabad in August.

This is the first such international event being held by the GSMA in Pakistan, and it will bring different stakeholders including the investors, innovators as well as the regulatory authorities of different countries under one roof.

“Pakistan has the potential to become knowledge-based economy where innovation and technology drive economic growth and enhance governance,” he said but added that there was a need for implementation of all the regulatory actions taken in this regard.

He added that the Digital Nation Summit conveys how societies need to go digital, but at the same time the GSMA head for the region also expressed scepticism over the impact of federal budget 2025 on the IT and telecom sector, and said that the increasing taxation on phone sets will damage the “Smartphone for All” initiative of GSMA.

He added that mobile phone penetration in Pakistan stands at 40 per cent but it should be more than 70 per cent in such a country where large number of youth are present, and out of it the smartphone users are less than 60 per cent that restricts the widespread usage of fintech and other essential services available digitally.

Gorman added, “It has been observed that in Pakistan various authorities compete to restrict digitalisation, instead of complementing each other.”

He said that it has been estimated that the total economic impact of mobile phones on Pakistan’s economy has reached more than $20 billion in 2023, but the Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) was less than $1, which will discourage new investors to enter the Pakistani markets.

“Besides heavy taxation has discouraged investors as well as innovators to enter Pakistan’s market,” Gorman said. He also suggested that Pakistan needs to have a balance between security and digitalisation, and referring to restriction on X (formerly twitter) the head of GSMA Asia Pacific region added that Pakistan should have a clear strategy and policies in this regard to maintain the confidence of the investors, users as well as the content creators.

He said that since Pakistan was one of the leading freelance markets globally, the government needs to nurture their skills as digitalisation has led to a new era that had never existed before and physical boundaries of the state were being redefined by the digital boundaries in many spheres.