The Pakistan Economic Survey 2025-26, released on Thursday, June 11, 2026, has revealed that the Prime Minister’s Laptop Scheme distributed 74,427 devices to 407,713 students across 156 higher education institutions nationwide as of April 2026, with female students accounting for 54 percent of total participation. The scheme covered students in Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, the Federal Territory, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, and Gilgit-Baltistan, reflecting a national reach that extends well beyond Pakistan’s major urban centres.
The 54 percent female participation rate is a notably significant data point within the context of Pakistan’s persistent gender gap in education and digital access. The same Economic Survey recorded a male literacy rate of 73 percent against a female literacy rate of 54 percent across the general population, a gap that reflects decades of structural barriers to girls’ education at the primary and secondary levels. Against that backdrop, the fact that women account for a majority of laptop scheme beneficiaries at the higher education level indicates that the gender dynamic shifts meaningfully for those who reach university, and that targeted device distribution programmes can contribute to equalising access to technology among students who have already crossed the significant barrier of tertiary education enrolment.
The numbers also point to the scale at which the scheme has been operating. Distributing over 74,000 devices across 156 institutions in a single cycle, covering all seven administrative territories of Pakistan, represents a logistically substantial undertaking for the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication. The 407,713 students involved in the scheme’s current cycle further underlines the programme’s reach, though the gap between applicant numbers and devices distributed also highlights the degree to which demand for the programme consistently exceeds available supply, a pattern that has characterised the scheme across multiple phases since its introduction.
The Economic Survey’s disclosure of the laptop scheme figures comes one day before the presentation of the federal Budget 2026-27, making it a timely reminder of the programme’s ongoing role in the government’s digital inclusion agenda at precisely the moment when its future funding is being determined. Federal Minister Shaza Fatima Khawaja has already confirmed that the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication secured its full Rs 22 billion development budget for the coming fiscal year, with specific allocations earmarked for digital skills programmes and technology education initiatives. Whether the laptop scheme receives an expanded allocation in the upcoming budget will be closely watched by Pakistan’s higher education community, particularly given the evidence that the programme is already reaching female students at a rate that exceeds its overall participation distribution.
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