Pakistan’s IT sector: a billion dollars, and still off the map

Sometime this year, Pakistan’s freelancers will earn their first billion dollars. In the ten months to April they brought home around $959 million, nearly half again as much as the year before, while total IT exports reached $3.39 billion in the first nine months of this fiscal year, according to the State Bank and Pakistan Software Export Board figures. There are now more than 2.37 million registered freelancers logging in from bedrooms in Lahore, rented offices in Karachi and rooftops in Faisalabad, billing clients in dollars and bringing the money home. Around the same time, something quieter happened. Lahore appeared on the World Intellectual Property Organisation’s list of global innovation clusters for the first time, joining Islamabad.