Ahmed Khan Malik

The Sindh government has introduced various initiatives in the budget 2024-25 for promoting digitalisation of the economy. 

“The provincial government is committed to enhancing governance and administrative processes to boost the economy and improve people's lives,” Nusrat Jamali, Coordinator for E-Governance Project of the provincial government, told WealthPK. She said that these initiatives would lead towards the overall cost-effective implementation of the e-government programmes in the provincial ministries/divisions and to articulate and develop support for the e-government programme at the senior leadership level throughout the provincial government.  “The programme also aims to develop an e-governance strategy for the provincial government and to coordinate smooth end-to-end e-government project design and implementation,” she said. 

She noted that the provincial government will focus on identifying areas where digital solutions can be beneficial. This includes recommending ways to automate these areas through Business Process Re-engineering (BPR). Additionally, the government aims to identify and implement ongoing program improvements that align with industry standards, best practices, and the government's strategic objectives. “The initiatives will also review the status of e-government readiness for ensuring sustainable and accelerated digitisation and establish relevant benchmarks and performance standards against which to monitor and evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of the digital transformation initiatives,” she said.

The Information Technology Department’s ‘Digital Sindh’ vision focuses on the areas such as e-governance, skills development, human capital development, running boot camps, industry bridge programmes and research and development.  “The department has translated its vision into reality through its public sector development programmes by providing technological assistance to the sectors, including education, health, agriculture, livestock and police,” Nusrat noted, adding that the department has formulated Sindh Cloud First Policy to streamline cloud computing issues. “Likewise, the department has finally constituted its Digital Technology Board for ensuring digital governance across Sindh.” Nusrat said the provincial government has also announced the incentives for promotion of digitalisation of the economy in the latest budget. 

She pointed out that for promotion of economic digitalisation, Sindh Sales Tax (SST) rate has been reduced to 8.0% for the restaurant services involving customers' payments through digital means like debit/credit card, mobile wallet, and QR Scanning. “To support telecom services, which currently face a high SST rate of 19.5% while their input items are subject to a Federal ST of up to 18% (previously 17%), it has been decided to increase the allowable input tax credit to 18%, up from the current 17%,” she said.

Credit: INP-WealthPk