ISLAMABAD: The largest IT solution provider in the country has said that Pakistan should focus on local software development and for achieving that objective, it must facilitate international companies by maintaining consistency of policies.

“The excellent human resource of Pakistan usually moves out of the country either seeking jobs or to work as self-employed,” Saqib Ahmed, Managing Director of System Analysis Programme Development (SAP), said.

SAP is a German multinational software corporation that develops enterprise software to manage business operations and customer relations.

Talking to media here on Wednesday, Mr Ahmed said that there was strong voice across the world regarding laws that regulated Cloud services.

The Cloud services were taking a predominant role in the modern world and businesses are acquiring these services instead of maintaining their own data centres and incorporate them with their IT operations.

However, Mr Ahmed said that various geo-political crises were creating new challenges for the Cloud businesses.

“The demand is rising for Cloud services’ providers and data centre operators to apply laws of the country placing its data with them instead of the laws of the host country, to ensure that any war-like situation does not affect their data,” he said.

Like several countries of the world, relevant authorities in Pakistan too keep a watch on employees and top management of the companies maintaining data of public and private sector entities.

Pakistan has also requested SAP to shift data of Pakistani companies from the Gulf region to China, as there were many Indian nationals at key positions in the Gulf region.

At present more than 90 per cent public and private sector companies in the country use SAP solutions for streamlining their operations.

SAP has more than 230 million Cloud users and more than 100 IT solutions covering all business functions.

A Cloud-based solution protects organisations in financial terms, reduces human errors and allows better streamlining and coordination, compared with non-Cloud-based solutions.

Regarding development of IT-based solutions in the country, Mr Ahmed said that the government must focus on local software development and be pro-active for the purpose.

“Consistency of policies regarding taxation and other facilitations is extremely necessary as the IT sector has seen tax imposition and its waiver again and again and such steps confuse international players,” the SAP MD said.

The second important step needed to be taken by the government and the State Bank of Pakistan was easy method to make payments to vendors living abroad and repatriate profits.

Published in Dawn, March 10th, 2022