Pakistan’s technology sector earned $4.2 billion in export receipts during the July 2025 to May 2026 period, a year-on-year rise of approximately 20 percent, putting the country on course to exceed its $4.5 billion full-year target for FY2026 (Arab News; Express Tribune).
Pakistani freelancers contributed $1 billion of that total — the first time the freelance segment has crossed the billion-dollar mark in a single fiscal year — representing a 25 percent share of overall IT exports and an 80 percent year-on-year increase in earnings (Express Tribune; Payoneer). May 2026 alone produced $373 million in tech export receipts, a 13 percent year-on-year increase.
The government has tried to sustain momentum through the FY2026-27 budget, which extends the preferential 0.25 percent final tax rate on IT export earnings through June 2029 and cuts the advance tax on foreign remittances from 5 percent to 0.5 percent. Islamabad has set a medium-term IT export target of $15 billion by 2030.
Pakistan’s IT and IT-enabled services sector employs roughly a million freelancers alongside formal software development and business process outsourcing firms. The sector’s foreign exchange earnings have become an important buffer at a time when the country is rebuilding its reserves from near-crisis levels — reserves that have climbed from approximately $4 billion three years ago to over $17 billion as FY2026 closes.
