KARACHI: President Arif Alvi on Saturday called for producing more ‘quality’ IT graduates to meet the growing global demand for technology-driven knowledge.

“The chip manufacturing will be a $1.3 trillion industry by 2030, and the IT sector would be a multi-billion dollar industry in the near future which requires more than 80 million graduates in the IT sector,” the president said.

He was addressing a ceremony celebrating Pakistan’s first open-source RISC-V microprocessor designed at the Usman Institute of Technology (UIT) here at its campus.

“So, we should produce more graduates. The government and private institutions should focus on this sector as to how to produce more graduates in the country,” he said.

He added Pakistan is considering setting up a quantum lab. “The Virtual and Quaid-i-Azam universities are doing an excellent job by producing graduates in the sector and in addition, they are conducting online classes for short courses to meet the rising demand.”

In addition, he said the government had reduced taxes on the IT sector to encourage the institutions. “We will continue all kinds of support for the IT sector.”

Talking about the last visit of the prime minister to China, he said that he did not ask for any other support except for extending collaboration in the different sectors like textile, IT.

Published in Dawn, March 6th, 2022