By Staff Reporter
KARACHI: Pakistan’s technology exports climbed 20% in the first 11 months of fiscal year 2026 to $4.2 billion, driven by a near-doubling of freelancer earnings and sustained international demand for the country’s software and digital services — figures that underscore how dramatically the sector has outpaced the broader economy.
Finance Adviser Khurram Schehzad disclosed the numbers Wednesday, saying Pakistan now expects full-year IT exports to exceed $4.5 billion, which would represent an 18% increase over fiscal 2025’s record $3.8 billion. The sector, he said, remains on a trajectory consistent with the government’s ambition to reach $10 billion in annual IT exports by fiscal 2029.
The monthly picture carried a seasonal asterisk. Exports totaled $373 million in May, up 13% from a year earlier but down 12% from April, a decline that brokerage Topline Research attributed to the reduced number of working days during Eid holidays. Net IT exports — stripping out imports — came in at $314 million for May, a 7% year-on-year increase, reflecting the sector’s growing contribution to Pakistan’s hard-pressed external accounts.
The standout figure in Wednesday’s release was freelancer income. Pakistani freelancers generated $1.6 billion in export earnings during the first 11 months of the fiscal year, an 80% surge compared with the same period a year ago. In May alone, freelancer receipts hit $169 million, up more than 87% year-on-year.
That growth matters well beyond the balance sheet. Pakistan spent much of 2022 and 2023 in acute financial distress, watching foreign-exchange reserves dwindle to the point where the country struggled to cover a few weeks of imports. A $7 billion loan program from the International Monetary Fund, secured in 2023 and extended since, has stabilized the currency and provided breathing room for policymakers to pivot toward structural reforms centered on export-led growth. The IT sector’s expansion has become one of the most visible proof points of that strategy.
Under its “Uraan Pakistan” economic transformation agenda, the government has set a compound annual growth rate of roughly 27% as the benchmark required to reach the $10 billion export target within three years. Analysts view that goal as ambitious but not implausible, contingent on a series of conditions that have historically been difficult for Pakistan to sustain simultaneously.
Among them: continued policy certainty, expanded digital infrastructure, easier access to international payment systems — a persistent friction point for Pakistani tech companies and freelancers — and measures to ensure foreign-exchange inflows from the sector are fully captured in official data. Industry observers note that a portion of freelance earnings historically flowed through informal channels, meaning official figures may understate actual activity even as they show rapid growth.
The sector’s competitive advantages are structural. Pakistan has a large and expanding pool of English-speaking technology professionals, operating costs that remain a fraction of those in Western markets, and a demographic profile — roughly 60% of the population is under 30 — that provides a sustained pipeline of potential talent. International platforms including Fiverr, Upwork, and Toptal rank Pakistan among their top markets by freelancer volume.
What the country has historically struggled to offer is stability — of currency, regulation, and power supply. The IMF program has addressed some of those concerns, and investor sentiment has cautiously improved, though Pakistan’s credit ratings remain in non-investment-grade territory and the government still faces significant fiscal consolidation targets.
Schehzad struck a bullish tone in a series of posts on X. “Pakistan’s tech sector continues to be one of the country’s strongest export success stories, driving digital transformation, creating high-value employment, and expanding Pakistan’s global technology footprint,” he wrote, adding that sustained policy support in the fiscal 2027 budget would be critical to maintaining double-digit growth.
The government is expected to use the upcoming budget to extend incentives for technology companies, including tax exemptions on export income and preferential foreign-exchange repatriation rules — measures that the industry has said are essential to retaining talent and attracting foreign investment.
For an economy that has long relied on textiles and remittances to anchor its external accounts, the IT sector’s ascent represents something of a structural shift. Whether it proves durable will depend, in large part, on whether Islamabad can sustain the kind of policy consistency it has rarely managed for long.
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