The government has welcomed the establishment of Huawei Pakistan’s Repair Centre GSC in Islamabad, one of the leading facilities of its kind in the country for telecom hardware equipment, saying it will create high-skilled jobs, cut foreign exchange outflows, and help Pakistan shift from consuming technology to building it. Federal Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunication Shaza Fatima Khawaja said this at the inauguration ceremony of the centre, thanking Huawei’s leadership and team for setting up the facility in Pakistan. She credited policy certainty, along with the backing of Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif and the federal cabinet for the IT and telecom sectors, for creating an environment that encouraged international companies to expand their presence in the country.
Khawaja said Pakistan had made significant progress in software and IT-enabled services, and that a hardware repair facility marked an important step for the telecom sector specifically. She said equipment repaired locally to international standards could eventually be offered to the world by Pakistan’s young people, adding that telecom equipment was not just a matter of social media or communication, but a lifeline during disasters and network outages. She said local repair would shorten the time lost in sending equipment abroad and bringing it back, while saving foreign exchange, framing the facility as a tool for both economic and infrastructure resilience rather than a purely commercial venture.
The centre currently has a repair capacity of 10,000 pieces and can repair around 180 types of equipment, with Khawaja saying she hoped both figures would grow and that the facility could in time serve the wider region, given Huawei’s extensive presence in telecom networks worldwide. She noted that Huawei had worked in Pakistan since 1998, including on the Karakoram Digital Highway, and had moved from providing digital infrastructure to supporting equipment repair, maintenance, and skills development. She recalled that during the prime minister’s first visit to China in 2024, the Pakistani delegation had visited Huawei’s headquarters and asked the company to train young Pakistanis, a programme she said was still running, with Huawei academies now operating in around 230 universities and more than 100 academies providing training.
Khawaja described the company as a partner in improving human resources and not just a technology partner, calling it one of Pakistan’s key technology partners overall. She added that the government valued its partnership with China and wanted to deepen cooperation in technology, skills development, and digitalization. The government’s framing of the repair centre, wanted Pakistanis to be builders and users of technology, and not only its consumers, positions the facility as part of a broader push to move the country’s tech relationship with international vendors beyond simple procurement toward genuine local capability building, a theme that has run through much of Pakistan’s recent engagement with major technology partners like Huawei across telecom infrastructure, skills training, and now hardware repair.
Follow the SPIN IDG WhatsApp Channel for updates across the Smart Pakistan Insights Network covering all of Pakistan’s technology ecosystem.
