KARACHI: A Pakistani company specializing in big data technology said on Friday it wanted to benefit from the burgeoning information technology market in the Middle East by focusing on the opportunities provided by the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
Many Middle Eastern countries, particularly in the Gulf region, have turned themselves into the hub of information technology as they try to reduce their dependence on oil sector by diversifying their economies.
Some estimates suggest the total spending on the communication services in the information technology sector in the Middle East and North Africa will cross $120 billion in 2022.
Spending on devices, such as personal computers, tablets, mobile phones, printers, and other hardware in the region is expected to reach $28.13 billion in the coming years.
According to Statista, a US-based market and consumer data provider, the total spending in the IT sector of Middle East and North Africa will soon reach around $177.94 billion.
“We are pitching big data, network security and virtual realization in the Middle East because these are all future relevant technologies and products where skillset is not in abundance,” Veqar ul Islam, chief executive officer of Jaffer Business Systems (JBS), a Karachi-based conglomerate, told Arab News. “We are planning to penetrate the markets in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and other Gulf countries.”
The JBS offers integrated IT solutions including servers, storage, datacenter, virtualization, cloud computing and workstations etc.

The services provided by the company have been designed and developed by Pakistani software engineers.
“The UAE is quite advanced when it comes to information technology,” he continued. “This implies that its market is ripe for anyone who wants to introduce new technologies such as our products and services. Similarly, Saudi Arabia has done quite a lot of ground work by developing operational information technology infrastructure, making the kingdom an equally good market for us.”
Islam informed his company was also interested in Qatar and Bahrain for the same reason.
He said he was particularly upbeat about the digital transformation of the Saudi infrastructure under Vision 2030.
“They are trying to digitize the whole Hajj operation,” he continued. “Imagine the kind of data which will emerge from the process and the kind of advantage companies like us will have.”
The JBS chief said his company’s foray into the Middle East will also help the country increase its overall export revenue.
According to Pakistan’s commerce ministry, the country’s IT and IT-enabled service exports increased to $635 million during the first quarter of the current fiscal year (FY22), posting a growth of 42 percent on a yearly basis.
“We can easily cross $2 billion by bolstering our IT exports,” he said. “If that happens, it will be roughly seven percent of our total exports.”
Islam, who is also the member of Prime Minister’s Taskforce on Information Technology, said he did not see any reason why Pakistan’s IT exports could not constitute 20-25 percent of the country’s overall exports within the next couple of years.
He maintained that things were fast changing in Pakistan after the COVID-19 outbreak, adding that the country’s policymakers were moved away from “fashionably talking about technology” to doing something concreate with it.
“The policy intervention and realization at the top will help us move in the right direction and accelerate the pace of development,” he added.