The Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication has ordered an independent review of the bidding documents for the Karachi Information Technology Park before launching a third tender for a Korean contractor, after two consecutive attempts to hire a construction firm ended without a single bid being submitted. The Project Review and Steering Committee has directed an independent Construction Contracts Consultant to review all bidding documents, with the draft Request for Proposal expected to complete that independent review by October 25, 2026, a step the ministry hopes will identify and resolve whatever structural or commercial issues in the tender documents have discouraged Korean companies from participating in the two prior rounds.
Under the revised timeline, the Project Review Committee and Korea’s Export-Import Bank are expected to approve the re-tendering process by November 15, 2026, with the third tender advertised on the same date. Companies will be given until January 4, 2027 to submit their bids, providing a window of approximately seven weeks for potential contractors to prepare their proposals. The evaluation process will proceed in two stages, beginning with a technical proposal assessment by the Project Technical Committee, followed by a financial proposal evaluation. The consolidated results will then be reviewed by the Project Steering and Review Committee before receiving final approval from Korea’s Export-Import Bank, a multi-layered evaluation sequence designed to ensure rigour but one that also adds to the overall timeline before a contractor can be formally engaged.
Following bid evaluation, contract negotiations are scheduled for February 2027, with Korea’s Export-Import Bank expected to issue its no-objection letter in March and the construction contract planned for signing by March 25, 2027. Once the contract is signed, the selected Korean contractor will be required to submit a bank guarantee, receive an advance payment, and complete its mobilisation by June 25, 2027, at which point ground-level construction work on the park is expected to commence in earnest. The entire sequence from the third tender advertisement to contractor mobilisation spans approximately seven months, a timeline that leaves little margin for further delays if the project is to recover meaningful ground after the two failed tender cycles.
The Karachi Information Technology Park was approved at a total project cost of United States Dollars 186.658 million, financed through a United States Dollars 158.416 million concessional loan from Korea’s Economic Development Cooperation Fund and United States Dollars 28.24 million from Pakistan’s Public Sector Development Programme. The project has significant strategic importance for Pakistan’s technology export ambitions, as dedicated information technology park infrastructure of this scale would provide the physical foundation for expanding the country’s software and IT-enabled services industry at a time when demand for Pakistani technology talent in global markets is growing faster than the domestic infrastructure to support it. The back-to-back failure of the first two tenders to attract any bids is a setback which causes the independent document review to be specifically tasked with identifying and addressing before the third attempt goes to market.
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