ISLAMABAD: Pakistani technology companies operating in Saudi Arabia say Houthi attacks on the Kingdom are slowing business activity and delaying projects, raising concerns on Wednesday that prolonged instability could undermine Pakistan’s growing IT exports and threaten employment in one of its most important overseas markets.

The warnings come after successive attacks on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport, including a strike on Saturday that killed 12 people and injured 309, followed by another on Sunday that killed a Pakistani national and wounded 11 others.

Saudi Arabia has emerged as a key market for Pakistani technology firms seeking to expand overseas, particularly as the Kingdom invests heavily in digital infrastructure, cloud computing and enterprise services under its Vision 2030 economic diversification program.

Executives interviewed by Arab News said the immediate concern was not the loss of existing contracts but uncertainty over future spending, with some clients reviewing budgets, postponing investments and delaying decisions on new projects.

“Regarding the current situation, it is quite unpredictable at the moment,” said Shumail Haider, country head of the IT division at Jeddah-based Typical Solution. “Companies are being affected in one way or another. The whole ecosystem ... is being affected.”

“Specifically, for the IT companies ... there was a lot of investment expected, which is on hold now,” he added. “The existing projects have been paused and new projects are being delayed.”

Haider said continued Houthi attacks were adding to an already difficult business environment, with regional tensions, supply chain disruptions and higher fuel costs putting pressure on firms across the region.

Saad Shah, founder and chief executive of Hexalyze, an enterprise technology consultancy with an office in Riyadh, said Saudi Arabia’s reputation for safety had been an important attraction for Pakistani technology businesses expanding into the Kingdom.

The recent attacks, however, had introduced uncertainty into the market, prompting some companies to reconsider spending plans, he said.

“We work with large enterprises,” he said, pointing out that these companies have predetermined budgets.

“Most of the organizations are thinking of cutting their budget according to their situation,” he continued, adding this explained why there was a direct impact on his business.

Shah cautioned that the attacks were too recent to determine their full commercial impact, though he pointed out that business activity had already slowed as companies assessed the security situation.

The concerns come at a critical time for Pakistan’s technology sector, which recorded exports of $4.6 billion in the fiscal year ended June 2026, an increase of 21 percent from the previous year, according to Information Technology Minister Shaza Fatima Khawaja.

Pakistani firms and freelancers have increasingly looked to Saudi Arabia for growth, benefiting from the Kingdom’s push to modernize public services and expand its digital economy.

“Saudi Arabia is a major market for the Pakistan IT industry as well as for the freelancers,” Shah said. “If the region is affected due to war and this sort of situation, definitely the export growth will be slow for the next year.”

The potential economic consequences extend beyond technology exports. Saudi Arabia is also Pakistan’s largest source of workers’ remittances, making sustained disruption to employment and business activity a concern for the country’s wider economy.

Pakistan received nearly $10.9 billion in remittances during the first quarter of the current fiscal year, including $899.1 million from Saudi Arabia in September alone, according to central bank figures.

Shah said the Kingdom employed large numbers of Pakistani workers across construction, finance, health care and technology, while an increasing number of Pakistani businesses had established local offices to serve Saudi clients.

A prolonged slowdown could therefore affect both companies’ export earnings and the incomes of Pakistani expatriates, although neither executive provided estimates of potential losses.

Haider said the extent of the damage would depend largely on how long the instability continued, warning that further attacks could deepen the disruption to investment and commercial activity.

“We hope this would settle down soon, but it seems that if it does not, then we will have far more effect than it is right now,” he said.