RAWALPINDI: Ministry of Information Technology and Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) collaborated for the development and promotion of Animation Industry in Pakistan.
According to the military media wing, Federal Minister for IT & Telecom, Syed Amin Ul Haque, Secretary IT & Telecom, Shoaib Ahmad Siddiqui, DG ISPR, Major General Babar Iftikhar were present on the occasion held in ISPR headquarters.
The global market size of the animation industry is around $270 Billion and expected to grow to $415 Billion by 2025. Pakistan has a huge potential to become a part of this growing industry.
The ISPR statement further added that currently, Currently, Pakistani animators have limited access to the required infrastructure and professional training/courses. Animation industry can contribute significantly to the economy of Pakistan. It can generate job opportunities, bring foreign investment and can help us prepare a trained workforce.
The animation is not just contributing to Entertainment only but it has been vastly adopted in, Education, Healthcare, Engineering and Defense. A collaborative effort will be made to promote animation technology/skills in relevant domains, said the statement.
In the context of enabling potential entrepreneurs in the field of Animation, a dedicated Animation Incubation Centre has also been proposed in the chalked out plan.
Short courses of animation, gaming and designing will be introduced to train quality human resource in specialized fields. The collaboration between MolTT and ISPR will act as a tangible head start in promoting the Animation Industry of Pakistan, the statement concluded.
Previously, Federal Minister of Science and Technology, Fawad Chaudhry, in November 2020, announced a special program of animation and video games to encourage young people to be part of the multi-billion dollar gaming industry. In his tweet, he stated: “If you are not interested in reading and are interested in video games on the phone, be prepared. Bringing a special program of video games programming so that we can be a part of this 90 billion industry, animation, and video games certification programs will be not only a game but a game-changer for young people,” he wrote on Twitter.
According to Statista, the entire video gaming market is expected to be worth over $200 billion by 2023. Despite the continuous growth in the gaming industry worldwide, Pakistan falls short in terms of developing video games and providing opportunities to programmers. The new initiative will be providing animation and video games certification programs to young people to boost the local gaming industry.
The initiative comes timely as spending on digital video games hit a record-high $10 billion in March as people stuck at home under coronavirus lockdowns turned to game, reported market tracker SuperData. Money spent on major console games leapt to $1.5 billion in March from $883 million in February, while spending on games played on high-performance personal computers climbed 56% to $567 million in the same comparison.
