Pakistan’s most valuable export last year never touched a port. It didn’t sit in a shipping container, clear a customs desk, or wait on a berth in Karachi. It moved as light through fibre-optic cable, priced in dollars and it left the country the instant someone in Toronto, Berlin or Dubai hit “accept” on an invoice.

For as long as Pakistan has been trading with the world, its exports have needed something physical to move: cotton bound for a mill, rice bound for a market, mangoes bound for a shelf before they spoil. Each shipment carried a cost before it earned a cent raw material sourced, freight booked, a supply chain vulnerable to weather, war, or a blocked strait. This past fiscal year, Pakistan quietly built a second export economy that runs on none of that. It runs on people and it doesn’t wait for a ship.

In FY2025-26, software houses, BPOs, export companies and independent freelancers together earned Pakistan US$4.6 billion in IT and IT-enabled services exports the largest figure the sector has ever posted, up 20.6 percent from US$3.8 billion the year before. June alone brought in US$416 million,........

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