> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.dailyferment.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Pakistan's $25 billion IT export target, worked out - URL: https://www.dailyferment.com/pakistan-it-exports-25-billion-target/ - Published: 2026-09-30T04:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-30T03:59:59.000Z - Description: The $25 billion IT export target is $15 billion of IT exports plus telecom and digitalisation. Reaching $15 billion by 2030 needs about 34% growth a year; Pakistan is growing at 17 to 20%. - Author: Rana Bilal Zafar - Tags: Business, Leadership, Engineering, #reframe On Monday, 28 September, visiting Huawei's Global Service Centre in Islamabad, the IT minister Shaza Fatima Khawaja said the government is "seriously working towards achieving the $25 billion export target set by the Prime Minister." Two weeks earlier, at a LUMS session on 15 September, the number she worked from was $15 billion. I work in a Lahore software house, so this is my industry's headline number. I wanted to know which target is the real one, and what it would take to hit it. ## Is Pakistan's IT export target $15 billion or $25 billion? Both, and they're the same plan. When the IT ministry presented its roadmap to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on 22 November 2024, Business Recorder reported the $25 billion as three parts over five years: $15 billion from IT exports, $1 billion from telecom exports, and $10 billion "through digitalization initiatives". So the part that is actually IT exports is $15 billion. The other $10 billion is something else, and the report doesn't say what it counts. When "$25 billion IT exports" appears in a headline, it's carrying a number that isn't IT exports. ## How fast would IT exports have to grow to reach $15 billion? Here's where we are. According to the State Bank figures ProPakistani reported, IT exports were $4.6 billion in FY2025-26, up 20% on the year before. That fell $400 million short of that year's own $5 billion target. The first two months of this year came in at $811 million, up 17%. The plan said five years from November 2024, which lands around 2029\. Later coverage puts the $15 billion at 2030\. I ran both from the $4.6 billion base. | To reach $15 billion by | Growth needed every year | | ----------------------- | ------------------------ | | FY2029 (3 years) | about 48% | | FY2030 (4 years) | about 34% | At today's pace the dates move a long way. Growing 20% a year, $15 billion arrives in about six and a half years, so around FY2032 or FY2033\. At 17% it's closer to seven and a half. My first reaction was that this makes the target look unserious. I don't think that's fair. Twenty percent a year for an export sector is good, and a stretch target is allowed to stretch. The problem is narrower: nobody says out loud that the plan needs growth to nearly double, and without that sentence nobody has to say what will make it double. ![Bar chart of Pakistan IT exports from FY26 to FY30 at 20% growth against the path needed to reach $15 billion](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d7/b7/d7b77195-48c5-45ab-8688-51750879d1d6/content/images/2026/09/df21-growth.png) IT exports at 20% a year against the path to $15 billion by FY30\. Base: SBP, FY26 $4.6 billion. Daily Ferment. ## What's actually holding Pakistan's IT exports back? This is where it crosses into something I deal with every week in delivery. When a burn-up chart says a project will finish late, you have three honest options: cut scope, add capacity, or move the date. The tempting fourth option is to change the unit, so the chart looks closer to the line without anything having moved. Folding telecom and "digitalization" into an IT exports headline is a bit like that. The honest options need someone to name the constraint. The interesting thing is that the people pushing hardest for the target each name a different one. Usman Asif, who runs Devsinc, pointed at who's in the workforce. At Indus AI Week in February he said: "Women represent half our population but account for barely 20 percent of our IT workforce. This is economic malpractice." The minister herself pointed at whether graduates can do the work. At LUMS she cited a test of 33,000 final-year computer science students in which only 0.4% scored above 80%, and said: "The jobs are there. The opportunity is there. But the right people with the right skills are not there." Bilal bin Saqib, who chairs the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, pointed at the money itself. In August he said that "approximately $40 billion that we get in remittances is still coming through the old model, through SWIFT", and talked about freelancers and developers being paid from abroad. His concern is speed and cost. Mine, reading it, is counting: a developer paid through a channel that lands as a remittance doesn't show up in the IT exports figure at all. Some of the gap may be work that's already happening and simply isn't being counted as IT exports. And NetSol, the company Salim Ghauri co-founded, is the reminder of a fourth lever: what we sell. It sells asset finance software and is listed on NASDAQ as well as the Pakistan Stock Exchange. Most of our export number is, as far as I can tell, people's time. Products don't need a proportional increase in people to grow, which is the only way I can see the growth rate doubling without the workforce doubling too. ## So which constraint matters most? I don't know, and I'd be suspicious of anyone who claimed to. My guess, from inside a services company, is that capacity and skills are the binding ones for firms like mine, and products are the only route that isn't bound by them. But that's an inference from one vantage point. What I'm more confident of is the shape. A target with no growth rate attached is a wish. A target divided by the growth rate tells you how far off you are, and then the honest conversation is about which of these constraints the plan expects to move, by how much, and who is responsible for moving it. ## What I'm confident of, and what I'm not The figures and quotes are established; they come from State Bank data as reported and from what each person said on the record. The growth arithmetic is established and anyone can reproduce it. What the $10 billion from digitalisation counts is unknown to me, because the report of the plan doesn't say. Which constraint matters most is my inference. The claim, in one sentence: a target turns into a plan only when you divide it by today's growth rate and name the constraint that has to move to close the gap; Pakistan's $15 billion needs about 34% a year against 17 to 20% now, and each person pushing for it is pointing at a different constraint. It's the same habit as [the Microsoft billing piece](https://www.dailyferment.com/microsoft-monthly-billing-uplift-interest-rate/): take a friendly number, write the formula down, and see what it's actually saying. ## Sources "Pakistan committed to $25 billion IT exports target, says Shaza Fatima Khawaja", Daily Independent, 28 September 2026\. [https://www.dailyindependent.com.pk/2026/09/28/pakistan-committed-to-25-billion-it-exports-target-says-shaza-fatima-khawaja/](https://www.dailyindependent.com.pk/2026/09/28/pakistan-committed-to-25-billion-it-exports-target-says-shaza-fatima-khawaja/?ref=dailyferment.com) "Pakistan's $15bn IT export target faces skills bottleneck: Shaza Fatima", The Nation, 15 September 2026\. [https://www.nation.com.pk/15-Sep-2026/pakistan-s-dollar-15bn-export-target-faces-skills-bottleneck-shaza-fatima](https://www.nation.com.pk/15-Sep-2026/pakistan-s-dollar-15bn-export-target-faces-skills-bottleneck-shaza-fatima?ref=dailyferment.com) "$25bn IT export target: PM presented comprehensive plan", Business Recorder, 22 November 2024\. [https://www.brecorder.com/news/40333934/25bn-it-export-target-pm-presented-comprehensive-plan](https://www.brecorder.com/news/40333934/25bn-it-export-target-pm-presented-comprehensive-plan?ref=dailyferment.com) "Pakistan's IT Exports Reach All-Time High of $4.6 Billion", ProPakistani, 17 July 2026\. [https://propakistani.pk/2026/07/17/pakistans-it-exports-reach-all-time-high-of-4-6-billion/](https://propakistani.pk/2026/07/17/pakistans-it-exports-reach-all-time-high-of-4-6-billion/?ref=dailyferment.com) "IT Exports Record 17% Growth in First 2 Months of FY27", ProPakistani, 16 September 2026\. [https://propakistani.pk/2026/09/16/it-exports-record-17-growth-in-first-2-months-of-fy27/](https://propakistani.pk/2026/09/16/it-exports-record-17-growth-in-first-2-months-of-fy27/?ref=dailyferment.com) "Pakistan has talent but needs will to win AI race: Devsinc CEO", Business Recorder, February 2026\. [https://www.brecorder.com/news/40408411](https://www.brecorder.com/news/40408411?ref=dailyferment.com) "Pakistan eyes $400mn remittance savings through stablecoins, says Bilal bin Saqib", Business Recorder, 22 August 2026\. [https://www.brecorder.com/news/40436066/pakistan-eyes-400mn-remittance-savings-through-stablecoins-says-bilal-bin-saqib](https://www.brecorder.com/news/40436066/pakistan-eyes-400mn-remittance-savings-through-stablecoins-says-bilal-bin-saqib?ref=dailyferment.com) Wikipedia, "NetSol Technologies". [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetSol\_Technologies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetSol%5FTechnologies?ref=dailyferment.com) Calculation: required annual growth g solving 4.6 × (1 + g)^n = 15 for n = 3 and 4; years to reach 15 at g = 17% and 20%, run 29 September 2026.