Mostly private businesses have been taking initiatives, using IT to become even more nimble, productive, efficient and accessible.

Intense competition, which already looms large in businesses in the West, is set to become more cut throat due to IT fever as the private businesses, much before the government, had started investing heavily in the IT by reorienting their decision-making process which now relies heavily on digital hardware and software. This not only makes these companies realize new levels of productivity and efficiency but also provide them with tools for this digital transformation.

The latest statistics coming from the United States on the impact of IT on the economy, reveals that this sector has helped contain inflation, increase productivity and generate massive investments for the country that sustained its longest growth cycle since the 19th century with record low unemployment. Phenomenal advancement by our neighbour nation in IT sector and software exports is now hitting the headlines around the world. Countries like Ireland and India, leaders in software exports, had actually conceived the plans in 1970s and 1950s.

In Pakistan, the IT craze has just kickstarted and no body knows how many years it will take to mould into a revolution. But the government seems to be very much optimistic.

Pakistan's share of software exports is estimated at only one per cent out of total global exports. Exporters were facing some problems from the government side as well as from the Export Promotion Bureau (EPB). We export software but no actual figures are available. Exporters and even the Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS) are tight lipped perhaps due to negligible revenue earnings. IT experts say that Pakistan does not have the capacity to export even $100 million.

It seems quite prudent that the present government has made IT its top most priority and has allocated a sizable budget, a ministry and tons of private sector "specialist volunteers". The government aims to develop an extensive pool of trained IT manpower at all levels, emphasizing women to enter it, provide business incentives for both local and foreign investors, develop an encouraging legislative and regulatory framework, setting up cost effective infrastructure and set up national data base.

The government has engaged foreign consultants to conduct survey of IT institutes and these consultants will submit their report in January. The government also relies heavily on the private sector to play its role in IT promotion as the government does not have the capacity to develop IT training institutes all over the country.

However, there is an acute shortage of trained IT people as well as manpower to train graduates. We need over 50,000 IT trained people right now as compared to existing 8,000-9,000 people.

The government has allocated Rs 15 billion for the first year to develop IT. Under the action plan, IT parks are being set up and one has already started in Islamabad. IT parks are also being set up in Lahore and in Karachi at Pakistan Insurance Building.

There is a need for investment in the IT to raise its share in the GDP which is only 0.1 per cent as compared to over three per cent in advanced countries.

There is no ample incentives and regulatory measures from the government and it is time to create an environment for attracting investment in IT sector so that our graduates could be absorbed domestically before they leave to foreign destinations.

Pakistan needs massive investments in education over a long period of time to be able to carve out its niche in IT or any other knowledge intensive industry.

Out of 160 or so nations, Pakistan is ranked 147th on the literacy level, 128th on the Human Development Index, 132nd on the GDP level, and is the 7th most populated nation and has a measly 0.02 per cent share of the global trade. These statistics are enough to scare the most hardened investors, let alone a new one.

The way the Information Technology (IT) fever has gripped the nation, it seems that an IT revolution in the country is just two or three years away, but practically, is it really in sight?

There has always been the bad luck that technologies and innovations, after gripping the world, arrive late in Pakistan. After computers, the IT is now the new buzz word for the nation to go wild.

Just have a six month crash course in IT, you may be able to get the job within the country or abroad as compared to engineers and master's degree holders, who are now unemployed.

There is no doubt that the IT is currently in the process of sweeping across Pakistan just as it has in other countries. The increasingly high labour costs of IT personnel in developed nations is forcing many companies to seriously consider offshore production and development.

Silver lining is that despite Pakistan's low literacy rate of 30 per cent or even less, we still have an educated segment of 25 million people and English is virtually the language of choice amongst all Pakistani professionals, IT related or otherwise.

According to government officials, IT sector is poised to boom in the next two to three years, giving a hope of economic and social growth.

It really seems as if all our economic woes will be over, our debts would be paid off, our business will become world class competitors, unemployment will dip below zero and IT will soon become a major foreign exchange earner for the country. It looks splendid on the TV and news, but look closely and God forbid if you are even remotely associated with IT and have knowledge as to what is happening around the world, you just want to scream out in anguish.

Incidentally, a lot of people have set up IT institutes to mint money and this must be checked because a mushroom growth will affect the quality. Every investor, after getting wounds from the bourses and property markets, are now eager to open an IT institute at his home of 120 or 200 yards.

Various graduates are now taking IT as full time course and some doing courses as part time. They rush to these so called IT institutes so that they could get a job easily.

As has been noted earlier, the reason why the IT has permeated the business world in the West is simply the desire of the companies to let their employees work harder, smarter and offer services and products that are better. IT is something that is not new for them. Electronic commerce, now in vogue, is decades old, what is new is the orientation of businesses keeping in view the new free for all global world trade order and the rise of internet to reach the market and formulate business strategies for places which earlier they could not even spell.

Internet and commerce through web are only a natural extension and an easy step for their unending drive to be the best. The workforce was already not just highly literate and productive but also computer oriented (ATM's, Call Centres, automation etc) the necessary infrastructure and systems already in place. The decision was not how to digitize the already existing business information but how to facilitate even faster way of business execution - web commerce.

Now let us look at the corporations in Pakistan, which have been doing business with virtually non-existent information strategy in an environment of heavily protected tariffs and zero competition. Furthermore, the ineffective corporate laws and world class administrative corruption eliminated the need for our organizations to ever give professional management, global trends and productivity and efficiency and other issues a serious thought. The result: thousands of our units are "sick", our productivity is lowest in Asia, investment dried up and a clueless government throwing the little which is left to every 'volunteer specialist' who comes with a new plan to increase exports.

The Minister for Science and Technology, Dr Atta ur Rahman has a good reputation and understands scientific research and development well. It is expected that he will use the same acumen that he utilized to make HEJ a world-class research and development centre, to make some sense into the dilapidated state of the education and institutes of research and higher learning i.e. our universities. But alas, even his energies have been wrongly focused into making Pakistan some body in the IT world.

Instead of resuscitating our existing 36 universities and turning them into respectable, research focused centres of education, there is a plan to make seven more IT universities which, all indications are, would join the ranks of existing universities making a total of 43 less than mediocre universities.

IT is important, but do we have competitive advantage in it but can we really become a software export super power by producing world-class data operators and other professionals who have done six weeks crash course? Isn't this a ludicrous dream of one of our ex-presidents who wanted to see an army of data operators that also envisioned women giving up sewing machines and buying computers for data entry operators?

Instead of rationalizing the situation and taking long term decisions, energies and time are being wasted in short term ill projects. The very people in charge of such pipe dreams are themselves publicly confessing that there are no statistics of any software export from Pakistan.

With the monopoly of PTCL on long distance voice transmission ending in about a year and a half, and advances in telecommunications continuously eroding PTCL's earning power, where will it make money? Where is accountability? Is the government ready to prosecute everyone responsible for making lofty claims about software exports? Corporatize PTCL at the earliest so it can diversify into other value added 'convergence media' i.e. data, video and wireless.

Instead of being true radicals as the present government so much wants to be portrayed as, and learn from past mistakes by making this country less bureaucratic, more open, freer and disciplined they have trapped themselves in the never ending suicidal cycle of policies, agendas and foreign trips.

Those who are aping India and trying to monkeying its progress in the field of IT are forgetting the fundamental difference between Pakistan and India - Merit Vs Quota. Most of the Indians who left India were not disgruntled like most of the educated Pakistanis are. These Indians know that their country, being poor and under developed, can only offer this much opportunities and merit is the criterion unlike Pakistan where the most corrupt and the most powerful get opportunities. So when India opened its markets and became more liberal, overseas Indians made a beeline for investments. Indian government has no role to play in its software development, all they have done is to stay out of it.

And this has to be the case with Pakistan. If the present government is still serious about reforms and putting the country back on the track, it has to win the confidence of Pakistanis who have left and persuade them to come back. There is no other option. To encourage investment, the whole business climate has to be changed, rule of law is to be established, protection to investments be given and only those businesses be supported and facilitated that have the potential to steer Pakistan in the 21st century. Unfortunately, with all the tall claims, IT is not one of them.