ISLAMABAD: The USD 78 million Digital Economy Enhancement Project, financed by World Bank, is encountering significant implementation delays nearly two years after its approval, with official documents showing zero transactions recorded on the Pakistan Business Portal and overall disbursement standing at just 7.39 percent. The project, approved in March 2024, has so far disbursed USD 5.32 million and is scheduled to close on July 31, 2028. While institutional notifications and regulatory groundwork have been completed, core services designed to directly benefit businesses remain non operational, raising concerns about the pace of execution and on ground impact.
Under Component 2 of the initiative, the Pakistan Business Portal was envisioned as a central digital platform to streamline registration, licences, certificates and other regulatory approvals in order to lower compliance costs and improve ease of doing business. However, no Registration, Licences, Certificates and Other transactions have been processed to date, and no government to business services have been transitioned online through the portal. The project’s development objective is to enhance the government’s capacity for digitally enabled public service delivery for both citizens and businesses. Despite the lack of functional rollout in key business facing areas, overall progress toward achieving the project development objective and implementation progress are both rated as Moderately Satisfactory. The overall risk rating has improved from Substantial to Moderate, although macroeconomic risk continues to be assessed as High.
At the same time, certain foundational digital infrastructure milestones have been achieved. Following the enactment of the Digital Nation Pakistan Act, which formally established the country’s digital government institutional framework, Pakistan issued approximately 850,000 digital IDs between August and December 2025 after the soft launch of its national digital identity system. A total of 849,177 digital IDs were issued during this period. The Digital Vault, accessible through the PakID app, currently provides seven verifiable credentials, including family registration certificates, vehicle registration documents, vaccination certificates and dematerialised national identity cards. In parallel, the National Data Exchange Layer has processed 1.2 million transactions, with seven entities integrated into the platform as of January 2026. Regulations governing Digital ID and the data exchange layer have been approved by the federal government, laying a regulatory base for future interoperability.
However, broader structural reforms remain pending. The adoption of a whole of government enterprise architecture, comprehensive data governance and interoperability frameworks, and a national cybersecurity roadmap have yet to be finalized. Additionally, the project aims to reduce right of way permit processing time for broadband rollout from 120 days to 65 days by November 2027, but no measurable progress has been recorded on this indicator. By November 2027, the project targets include reaching 40 million users of digitally enabled services, processing 4,000 annual RLCO transactions through the business portal, achieving a 75 percent user satisfaction rate, and expanding integration across public and private sector entities. The coming phases will determine whether the project can translate its institutional groundwork into tangible digital services for businesses and citizens across Pakistan.
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