Friday, November 07, 2008
Musharraf, Aziz turned Bill Gates away
Rulers, Baboos seek share in foreign investment: Microsoft official
News Desk
RAWALPINDI: The real hurdle in the way of the Information Technology (IT) sector’s development are bureaucrats and politicians, as whenever foreigners reach here for investment, bureaucrats and politicians holding government offices first demand their share from them.
This was the reason that meetings of Bill Gates with former president Pervez Musharraf and former prime minister Shaukat Aziz remained unsuccessful, said speakers at a daylong workshop under the aegis of Microsoft in Islamabad.
In the workshop, the journalists were informed about the software piracy. Microsoft Citizenship Manager Afzal Mirza, Genuine Software Manager Salman Siddiqui, Oxford University Press Managing Director Amina Syed and Jibran from the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) presented papers on the subject matter and answered to the questions of participants.
Afzal Mirza said that international firms want to make huge investments in the IT sector in Pakistan but when they discuss their development plans with bureaucrats and office holders, first of all they are asked as to how much share of funds would be offered to them. He said sometimes 90 per cent of total funding is demanded and thus foreign investors run away whereas there is no such trend in India.
The Microsoft official recalled that Microsoft Chief Bill Gates had held meetings with president Musharraf and former prime minister Shaukat Aziz in China but no progress could be made because Pakistani officials talked keeping in view their personal gains.
Afzal Mirza said that a project to set up 4,000 computer labs in the educational institutions of Punjab was being implemented while a project for training teachers had been completed. He said the Microsoft had offered to provide software in the government schools at extremely cheap rates but the offer was not accepted.
Salman Siddiqi told the participants that piracy was a global problem and was causing $40 billion loss annually. He said that pirated software are being widely used in Pakistan and the government and private organisations are in the forefront in this regard. He said that if use of pirated software is reduced by 10 per cent, it could add $163 million to the gross domestic produce and $23 million could be added to the national exchequer. Besides foreign firms could make huge investments.The Microsoft genuine software manager said that according to a survey of the Business Software Alliance, Pakistan’s IT sector was at 62nd position in global ranking.
Amina Syed said publications of the Oxford University Press are being published illegally and the National Book Foundation is also among such publishers while private sector publishing houses are doing so at a large scale. Counterfeiting is also rampant in pharmaceutical sector, she added.
She said that minimal punishment is awarded by courts while pirates are not being punished because of lacunae in the law. The FIA official said that the compact disk is not the only medium of software piracy, but pirated software are also available through the Internet.
OK NOW IF U READ THIS NEWS ARTICLE U WILL COME TO KNOW WHY MICROSOFT WONT COME TO PAKISTAN, AND I WANNA SAY ONE THING 2500 FOR ORIGINAL GAME IS STILL TOOOO EXPENSIVE 1000 to 1500 IS GOOD. I SUPPORT THIS IDEA OF MS LAUNCHING XBOX360 IN PAKISTAN BUT PAKI GOVT
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