The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is an international development finance institution dedicated to reducing poverty in Asia and the Pacific. It has committed to financing the set up of a benchmark model IT Park in Karachi.
The commitment includes the development of a strategy for national IT parks. The government has also requested the ADB to support its efforts to rejuvenate the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector. The Ministry of Information Technology and Telecom has also initiated institutional arrangements such as the establishment of ‘Research and Development Fund’ for ICT.
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They are also engaged in a bilateral manner with the Chinese government and are strengthening high-speed infrastructure capacity by undertaking development of landing gateways in the north and lying of fiber optics cable linkage systems. The information technology ministry is to implement the project in Karachi to construct the benchmark IT Park.
The project will contribute to higher and more inclusive growth through integrated adoption of ICT solutions in Pakistan and will help the government in adopting a long-term strategy and implementation framework for the re-invigorations of ICT sector.
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The assistance from ADB will also include the development of a smart city strategy and pilot it, and in order to strengthen ICT skills in higher education stream with technological readiness for knowledge-based economy.
The investment is in line with the government’s mid-term IT development policy, the ‘Digital Pakistan Policy 2017’. The project will be aligned with ICT industry contribution to inclusive growth increased, as outlined in the ‘Vision-2025’.
