Telecom Industry attracts $6.1bn FDI in last 4 years
Foreign direct investment of $6.1 billion were allured during July 1, 2018, to March 30,2022 by the telecom industry: As reported by Federal Minister for IT and Telecommunication Syed Amin ul Haque.
On the event of “World Telecommunication and Information Society Day”, the aforesaid Minister reported that the number of active cellular SIMs reached 193 million by March 2022 and mobile and fixed Broadband consumers’ numbers noticed 39.4 percent increase.
He stated that in the last three years, Pakistan has taken revolutionary steps in the information technology and telecommunications sectors and he attributed the aforementioned huge changes to these telecom reforms!
According to the IT minister, projects for the supplying of broadband services across the country have begun through the Universal Service Fund (USF), an attached department of the Ministry of IT and Telecom. By June 2021, over 37 projects worth Rs31 billion had been launched, with up to 50 to 75 percent of work done on the majority of these projects, he added.
Rs6.47 billion are being disbursed on nine different optical fibre and broadband projects in Punjab, and nine projects worth more than Rs8.48 billion are also underway in Sindh for the supplying of high-speed internet and putting down the optical fibre in the province. He cited
The variety of proposals for the 14 districts of Balochistan is 11 costing Rs8.43 billion. Over 7.08 billion rupees were being disbursed on eight different proposals of broadband services and optical fibre in 14 districts of KPK, he reported.
Aforesaid Minister cited that Rs29 billion were also being spent on 28 projects for the supplying of broadband services in far-stretched areas during cutting-edge monetary year.
Work was additionally going on nine different projects for putting down of fibre optic cable in all four provinces. Total of 4,746 kilometres long cable was being laid which would price Rs13.14 billion, he added.
He mentioned that USF finalized projects for the provision of a mobile network on 1,929 kilometres of main highways.
