March 01, 2007	Thursday	Safar 11, 1428

ISLAMABAD, Feb 28: Minister for Information Technology Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari on Wednesday said Pakistan’s telecom industry had received investments of Rs550 billion and Rs300 billion were pledged to be added in the next two to three years.

“The arrival of world’s biggest phone company China Mobile in Pakistan in recent days has further established the worth of country's telecom sector as an ideal place for investment for big players who are now converging on Pakistan to participate in the phenomenal growth being recorded on a constant basis,” said the minister.

The minister was addressing a function marking the signing of separate contracts by Telenor Pakistan with Nokia and Siemens for the extension of ongoing frame agreements involving deployment of radio network equipment, core network elements and other services until 2009.

The agreements with a potential to result in $750 million worth of orders from the Telenor Pakistan were some of the largest of their kind in the industry.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, Mr Leghari said, “Telenor Pakistan, Nokia and Siemans are key players in growth of local telecom industry. Through their commitment to invest and expand, they are reaching out to the last person who needs access.”

The minister said that while the pace of growth in the telecom sector had been impressive, it had also raised few issues of concern for the government, with the lack of good implementation service-based companies in Pakistan being a real concern.

He said big vendors such as Nokia and Siemens were merely relying on sub-contracting equipment installations to small local players whereas the sector had grown to a point where they needed to come to Pakistan in a big way by raising companies of scale whose human resource, products and services could also be exported outside Pakistan.