ISLAMABAD, Sept 20: Pakistan and China can capture the international markets by launching joint projects in the fields of information technology and telecommunication, China’s vice- minister for information industry, Lou Quinjin, said on Saturday.

“The two countries had many success stories in sectors like defence, and this cooperation could be extended to the telecom and IT sectors,” the Chinese minister said.

He was talking to Information Technology Minister Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari during his meeting with the latter at his office.

Mr Quinjin is leading an 11-member Chinese delegation currently visiting Pakistan.

During his meeting he was given extensive briefings about the progress and development made in the telecom and IT sectors in Pakistan. During the briefing, IT secretary Khalid Saeed and Chinese ambassador to Pakistan Zhang Chunxiang were also present.

Lou Quinjin appreciated the investment opportunities Pakistan offered to the investors with easy availability of rich human resource at very competitive price.

He said his country attached paramount importance to the IT and telecom sectors — a sector which had witnessed tremendous growth last year with the number of mobile and fixed line phone users increasing by 228 per cent in China.

The visiting minister said his country had also registered tremendous growth in its exports with the revenue generated by exports jumping to $92.6 billion last year while in the first half of the current year the volume of exports had gone up by 45 per cent.

Mr Leghari, meanwhile, gave an overview of the progress and development made in the IT and telecom sector in Pakistan, saying only 29 cities of Pakistan were connected via internet in September 2000, but the facility had been extended to 1,700 cities now with the number of internet users also going up to six million.

Similarly, the available bandwidth in May 2002 was a mere 265 megabits which had increased up to 610 megabits now.

“We have also achieved 200 per cent reduction in the cost of bandwidth to provide maximum incentives and facilities to the stakeholders,” he said, adding that they were offering almost free-of-cost bandwidth to the call centre industry. About the deregulation of telecom sector, Mr Leghari said the policy unfolded recently had set the stage for a massive foreign direct investment and according to World Bank estimates the sector was poised to receive investment worth $7 billion in the next five to six years. He said the mobile phone sector had also registered a tremendous growth and in the next two years the number of mobile phone users would double.

About the optic fibre connectivity, the minister said in March 2000 only 53 cities were connected through optic fibre, but now the facility had been extended to 360 cities.

Digitalization process of the PTCL network, which stood at 90 per cent in March 2000, had been carried forward to 100 per cent.

Similarly, teledensity in the country in March 2000 was two per cent, but in September 2003 it had gone up to 2.9 per cent and in the coming two to three years it was projected to reach around six per cent, he added.

Mr Leghari said Pakistan had witnessed an explosive growth in the IT-enabled areas with the proliferation of IT training had helped 10 million young people to get IT training compared to 1.8 million computer literates in 2000.

The ministry was spending 75 per cent of its budget on education and capacity building and already seven new IT universities had been established in the country.

He said all universities in the country were also being interlinked through optical fibre.