Minister for information technology Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari on Monday said the government had decided to set up a venture capital fund with an initial outlay of $5 million to finance projects aimed at manufacturing commercially viable IT and telecom products.
"We are willing to fund any proposal or project of applied nature, whether coming from the public or private sector research organisations, which ensure short- and medium-term benefits for the industry," the minister said.
He was delivering a keynote address to the second Pak-US international symposium on 'High Capacity Optical Networks and Enabling Technologies' here.
The three-day symposium has brought together some 250 experts and professionals from public and private sectors, who would deliberate various topics and issues ranging from optical communication, optical networks, wireless communication, wireless networks, network security, grid commuting and enabling technologies.
He said his ministry had taken yet another initiative in the sector in the form of a multi-billion Universal Service Fund to expand the telecom coverage and access to far off areas.
The promotion of broadband Internet was going to be the main focus of the government in the next couple of years and they foresaw wireless Internet as the solution to business processes, he added.
Later talking to newsmen, Awais said Pakistan faced international connectivity problems a couple of months ago but that phase was over now as Pakistan was already in the process of adding redundancy to its existing international connectivity through SEA-ME-WE-4, which would become operational within this week. He said two more submarine cables were also being laid to connect Pakistan to UAE while efforts were on to link up with Iran and India as well.
"This is in addition to three domestic alternate backbones being built by the private sector in the country."
To another question, he said Pakistan had already laid the optic fibre up to the Indian border near Wagah but Indian companies were yet to respond.
To another question, he said the PTCL deal was likely to go through as negotiations with Etisalat were going in the right directions. "You always face problems in seeing through a deal of this size and the delay in the PTCL privatisation is not an unusual case," he said.-PR