Efforts underway to develop e-commerce gateway framework: Anusha

Islamabad: Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunications (MoIT) is working alongside Ministry of Commerce to develop an e-commerce gateway framework so that online commercial projects can flourish.

This framework will also help increase consumers’ and businesses’ confidence in online payment systems.

Minister of State for Information Technology, Ms. Anusha Rahman who had a meeting with Chinese delegation led by Chairman of China Investment Promotion Centre, Yan Lijin assured the Chinese side that international companies would be invited to invest in e-commerce initiatives.

Any Chinese party interested in investing in establishing an Internet Payment system or an e-commerce gateway would receive full assistance for being an essential element of e-commerce value chain, she said.

China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is of great importance to principal stakeholders and in an attempt to increase regional connectivity between the countries, the recent meetings with Chinese delegation also discussed supplementary e-corridor component.

The delegation discussed how to enhance cooperation between China and Pakistan’s public and commercial sectors related to IT parks, electronic payments, innovation and similar IT services.

Both parties discussed ways to enable development of a range of initiatives in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sphere.

Ms. Anusha Rahman said the government believes in a “Digital Pakistan” and any assistance or collaboration from Chinese would help in materializing the vision of “accelerated digitization.”

The Chinese delegation put forward a proposal for establishing public-private partnership and a joint venture investment mechanism which is completely backed by Chinese IT and innovation groups.

The minister guaranteed that any proposals from the Chinese delegation in this regard would be thoroughly and swiftly evaluated to ensure complete transparency and conformity with the country’s legal system.

The delegates pointed out that Pakistan has a lot of potential in IT and Telecom sector and joint efforts needed to be made to optimize the financial output from these tech sectors.

Ministry of IT and Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) would work with their Chinese counterparts for coordinated efforts on everything related to ICT industry and technology park development.