KARACHI: Officials of the Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@SHA) on Thursday expressed “profound apprehensions” about Pakistan’s national budget announced a day earlier, saying the IT Industry’s proposals had been “completely overlooked” and demanding amendments to the finance bill.
Pakistan’s IT sector continued its growth momentum in April this year, marking another all-time high record of $310 million in inflows. Central bank data shows the country achieved 62 percent year-on-year growth in the sector. During the 10 months of the current fiscal year (10MFY24), IT exports clocked in at $2.59 billion, up by 21 percent annual basis as compared to $2.14 billion recorded in 10MFY23.
Pakistani IT exports are expected to rise to above $3.5 billion after the caretaker government allowed a retention limit from 35 percent to 50 percent in the Exporters’ Specialized Foreign Currency Accounts.
Against this background, Ali Ihsan, senior vice chairman of P@SHA, said the government had signed the “death warrant” of the IT industry with the new budget.
“The government should have been aware that the last savior of Pakistan’s economy is the IT industry,” Ihsan said, “be it exports, current account management, employment generation or foreign direct investment.”
Muhammad Zohaib Khan, the chairman of P@SHA, said the IT industry was already facing a dearth of skilled and highly-skilled workforce:
“The government should have given a special package to the human resource pool to enable IT companies to continue with the momentum of double-digit growth in IT exports.”
He said higher income taxes on the salaried class included in the budget would “further fuel the brain drain of the skilled workforce from the IT industry of Pakistan,” adding that an allocation of Rs79 billion ($282.8 million) was primarily for the government’s own projects and IT parks while the industry as a whole and IT companies had been neglected.
“The situation was already alarming vis-à-vis taxes and human resource availability and P@SHA has, time and again, duly presented the facts and relevant proposals to the government,” Khan added.
On taxation measures, the P@SHA chief emphasized that the burden on IT companies was further compounded by the failure to address the challenges posed by the remote worker tax regime.
“Ironically, instead of removing the anomalies in current tax laws, additional taxes have been levied on imports of equipment and GST on hardware has been counterproductively enhanced from 5 percent to 10 percent,” Khan said.
He said the budget “directly” contradicted the Ministry of IT and Telecom’s claims of supporting the industry for investments and exports, demanding “necessary amendments” in the finance bill to ensure that Pakistan’s IT sector continued on its “spectacular growth trajectory.”
Pakistan’s top IT body says government signed ‘death warrant’ of industry with budget 2024-25
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Pakistan’s top IT body says government signed ‘death warrant’ of industry with budget 2024-25
- Pakistan’s IT sector continued growth momentum in April marking another all-time high of $310 million inflows
- Chairman of P@SHA says IT industry was already facing a dearth of skilled and highly-skilled workforce
Walnut tree remains ‘under arrest’ for over a century, living symbol of colonial power in Pakistan
- British officer is said to have ordered chaining of the tree in 1898, a reminder of the absolute authority and psychological control enforced under colonial rule in Khyber Pass region
- Locals and historians say the shackled tree survives as a physical memory of the Frontier Crimes Regulation era, when even nature could be punished to discipline subjects and display power
LANDI KOTAL, KHYBER: In the military cantonment of Landi Kotal, close to Pakistan’s Torkham border crossing with Afghanistan and the mouth of the historic Khyber Pass, a single walnut tree stands bound in heavy iron chains.
It has been this way for more than a century, a surreal, almost absurd monument to the power structures and punitive imagination of the British Empire’s rule in the tribal frontier.
Black shackles still brace parts of its branches, giving it the appearance of a theatrical installation. To locals, it is a wound that never fully healed, a reminder that even nature could be punished when authority wished to show dominance.
Local oral histories trace the origin of this bizarre imprisonment to 1898, when a British officer named James Squid, allegedly intoxicated, believed the tree was moving toward him and instantly ordered it arrested. Soldiers carried out the instruction and the walnut tree has never been freed since.
Muhammad Sardar, the caretaker who oversees the site today, recounted the story as it has been passed down for generations.
“This British military official at that time was drunk and thought this walnut tree was moving toward him to attack him,” he told Arab News. “The officer ordered to arrest this tree, hence the soldiers had to obey the order and arrest this tree.”
Whether the event unfolded exactly as described is impossible to verify, but historians and residents agree on what the continued chaining represented: the unquestionable authority of colonial power.
A LAW THAT COULD BIND PEOPLE — AND TREES
Landi Kotal was one of the most militarized points of the British-controlled frontier, a strategic chokepoint along the Khyber Pass, a route armies, traders and empires have used for thousands of years. To control the region, the British introduced the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR), a law that denied locals the right to appeal, hire lawyers or challenge government decisions. Entire tribes could be punished for the suspected action of one member.
The chained walnut tree is often interpreted as a physical embodiment of that era: a warning made visible.
Dr. Syed Waqar Ali Shah, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Peshawar, said the symbolism was deliberate.
“It was an assertion of their [British] authority, it was a symbol of their power. Right. It’s a funny thing as well, because it’s something which was under the influence of some intoxication,” he explained.
“The officer behaved or gave orders for the imprisonment of that particular tree under the influence of some intoxicants.”
Dr. Shah continued:
“It was something which was a symbol of colonial authority, assertion of their authority, of bureaucratic diplomacy, a symbol of their bureaucratic strength and power, and maybe some cultural encounter as well.”
He added that such displays endured because “it was a cultural link between the locals and the colonial power. So it was a reflection of that. But later on, they continued with it in the presence of FCR (Frontier Crimes Regulation) and regulations like this.”
Even once the officer sobered, the chains remained.
Dr. Shah believes that was intentional: psychological messaging meant to instill conformity and fear in people living under colonial law.
“Their objective and purpose was to make it a symbol of discipline for the masses. It was an exhibition of power, a sheer exhibition of power, a symbol that if we can do this to something which was inhuman … if they can deal with a tree like this, so the general public, they should be aware that discipline is very important.”
Landi Kotal’s older residents say their fathers and grandfathers retold the story long before Pakistan existed and long before independence movements dismantled the Raj.
Usman Khan Shinwari, a 26-year-old shopkeeper, said the story continues to live in households like a family inheritance.
“My grandfather would often narrate this story of the arrested tree,” he recalled. “My grandfather would say that it shows how the then rulers were treating the locals and what our ancestors had endured.”
Over a century later, long after the end of British rule and the formal abolition of the Frontier Crimes Regulation in 2018, the walnut tree remains exactly where it was chained, part spectacle, part scar.
Tourists sometimes come to photograph it. Others stand silently before it.
But for many in Khyber, it is neither attraction nor curiosity.
It is proof that power once flowed one way only. A tree could be punished, so people learned not to resist.
