In recent years, a growing number of Asian players have made forays into the lucrative sector. India, for example, has sharpened its chip design capabilities over the years and in December last year, announced a US$10 billion plan to attract semiconductor giants and develop its semiconductor fabrication competence.

However, Pakistan is still lagging in this sector. “Pakistani semiconductor industry is at a very beginning stage. We have some capabilities of [chip] design. We have few companies that design their own chips or work in an outsourcing fashion for design centres…But overall, Pakistan is starting from ground zero,” revealed Dr Naveed Sherwani.

In a February webinar on the Pakistani semiconductor industry, he predicted that the industry could bring up to US$4 billion in forex to Pakistan each year if the country can get 100,000 semiconductor talent involved in the next 5 to 6 years.

Chip design and ATP services, on the other hand, are a more viable option as such divisions are labour-intensive and Pakistan has a relatively adequate stock of talent in place, amid the global talent shortage in the industry. In the US alone, around 70,000 to 90,000 workers or more will have to be added by 2025 from 2020 levels to meet the most critical workforce needs, according to a report by Eightfold.ai, a talent-management company.

Having established 18 chip-related firms around the globe including five enterprises in China, Dr Sherwani explicated, “China needs a lot of chip designers and trained workers. The number could be anywhere between 300,000 to 500,000. China does not have those people today, so they will have to be either produced in China or they will have to come from somewhere else.”

The entrepreneur sees great potential for China-Pakistan cooperation in this regard. “I think Pakistan can help China by providing, let’s say, 100,000 [semiconductor] people. Those people can either move to China or they can operate in Pakistan,” Dr Sherwani said.

In an early February interview with CEN during his visit to China with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, Pakistani Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Chaudhry Fawad said that Pakistan hopes to set up a semiconductor zone with China’s help.

To this end, Pakistan will provide favourable, enabling policies for Chinese tech companies as advised by the PNSP, according to Dr Sherwani. “Chinese companies can come inside the zone and leave the zone with no tax or customs. Make it very simple.” In such technology zones, the two countries can work on needy chips for consumer goods such as cellphones, mobile infrastructure networks, data centres and, IoT devices, said Dr Sherwani.