ISLAMABAD, Dec 5: Minister for Information Technology Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari on Monday called for joint efforts by governments and private sector in the Asia-Pacific region to reduce the digital divide. “The market-based process will not be enough and where the invisible hands of the market forces cannot do the job, the visible hands of the government must come into play to ensure a smooth pattern of growth and development,” he said at the inaugural session of the 29th meeting of the management committee of Asia-Pacific Tele-community (APT).

The minister, whose address was read out by IT Secretary Farrukh Qayyum, said everyone was aware of the rapid transformations taking place in this era of globalization and information.

Economic development theories based on the endowment of natural resources have lost their ground as information has come to be recognized as the key to economic development and wealth, he said.

He described as essential the provision of equitable access to telecommunication facilities in order to harness the full potential of huge reserves of data available on the national and international public networks.

Mr Leghari said the World Summit on Information Society had declared ‘the right to communicate’ as fundamental to the notion of information society.

He said Pakistan had been following a structured approach of liberalization, deregulation, and the process of structural reform of the sector had recently completed with the privatization of the incumbent.