IT industry job growth rate rises to 41 percent

[Naveed Yaseen]

By Muhammad Yasir
KARACHI: Pakistan’s employment growth rate in Information and Technology (IT) and its related sectors has increased by 41 percent in 2007-08 from 27 percent in 2006-07, a study commissioned by Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@SHA) reported.

According to the study entitled “Annual Review of Pakistan Software/BPO Industry 2007”, the number of full-time IT professionals has risen to12,232 by the end of 2007 as compared to the 4,619 employees registered in 2004.

P@SHA commisioned a study in the last quarter of 2007 which would serve as a State of the Industry Report for the Pakistan IT & ITES sector. The Consultants for this study, which was carried out over a 4-month period, were Technomics International - a UK based consulting firm.

The average employee per companies has increased to 214 in 2007 as against 81 in 2004. On the other hand, the average length of professional employment has risen to 2.9 years from 2.6 years during the period under review.

The study said the number of IT Quality Assurance (QA) Professionals have doubled in the last three years with 20 percent foreign qualified professionals employed in the sector.

105 national and multinational software companies participated in the report. P@SHA’s current membership exceeds to 370 software houses from its beginning four companies in 1994, it said.

President P@SHA, Jahan Ara, said the industry still has job opportunities in various related fields of IT industry despite its constant growth in employment rate.

She recommended the government should finance to prepare a refresher diploma courses that aims at grooming unemployed IT graduates to enter in this professionals, adding, “the industry has capability to accommodate a large number of unemployed people.”

She mentioned that scores of IT graduates and diploma holders are required to obtain advance studies in order to update their professional skills with respect to latest modules of the industry.

The study forecast the industry will exceed the $11 billion US mark within next 5 years keeping the same growth rate in this period.

The study mentioned that most technology companies are growing in excess of 30 percent a year annually and the industry as a whole is doing over $2 billion a year in revenue, up from less than a billion dollars a few years ago.

About half of this growth is coming from foreign software and high end services projects. IBM, Cisco and Microsoft are expanding Pakistan operations aggressively while several startups are now backed by venture capitals such as ePlanet, Ventures, Motorola, Adobe and Innovacom1.

The Pakistan IT and ITES industry has started to appear on the radar of firms like Gartner and IDC and in reports by AT Kearny and the World Bank. It is a transformed industry growing exponentially and creating a stir, it also mentioned.

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