STAFF REPORT IBD: PTA Chairman Dr. Mohammed Yaseen has said that Pakistan telecom sector is considered as an exemplary growth model around the globe and our agriculture sector can also be a model by adopting telecom and getting its benefits. Today, we have total teledensity of over 72 per cent with 119.9 million mobile subscribers.
He said this at a workshop on “What Can Telecommunications Do for Agriculture” recently arranged by the PTA here in collaboration with LIRNEasia, a regional ICT Policy Think Tank, based in Sri Lanka.
The event attended by representatives from agriculture organizations, international experts, agriculture consultants, policy makers, government officials, farmers associations, telecom operators, value added service providers, agriculture credit departments and donor agencies including World Bank, ADB, USAID, DFID working in the agriculture sector.
He said that after success in e-commerce and Branchless Banking initiatives, PTA is now encouraging the development of local content based mobile/ICT applications and willing to extend all sort of support to help the farmers through the provision of reliable and timely information, local content based applications, automation of agriculture production processes.
In his remarks, Dr. Rohan Samarjiva, CEO and Chair LIRNEasia recommended that mobiles are the pre-eminent communication technology among the poor, among smallholders and those who interact with them.