Pakistan's IT exports cross $4 billion in FY2026, but the freelancer income gap is widening
The State Bank just released the eleven-month figure: $3.94 billion through April, on track to clear $4.3 billion for the fiscal year. Inside the headline, two different stories are playing out at the same time.
The short version. Pakistan's IT and IT-enabled services exports hit $3.94 billion in the first eleven months of FY2026, according to State Bank of Pakistan figures released this morning. That puts the country on a clear path to cross $4.3 billion for the full fiscal year, up roughly 28% year-on-year. The headline is good. The composition is more interesting.
The number
The SBP's monthly bulletin shows IT services receipts of $3.94 billion for July 2025 through April 2026, the fastest pace on record. Goods exports of computer hardware are negligible in comparison: under $40 million for the same period.
Run the math forward at the current April pace ($410 million/month) and the year closes around $4.35 billion. Anything above $4.2 billion is a record. Anything above $4.4 billion would be the year the government's often-quoted "$5 billion by 2030" target stops looking aspirational and starts looking conservative.
Where the money is coming from
The breakdown matters more than the headline:
| Channel | Share of FY2026 exports | YoY change |
|---|---|---|
| Established service companies (Systems Limited, Netsol, TPS, etc.) | ~46% | +18% |
| Foreign-owned subsidiaries (Afiniti, Visa PK, Bank of America PK) | ~22% | +14% |
| Funded startups (Bazaar, Abhi, Tajir, etc.) | ~11% | +52% |
| Independent freelancers via banking channels (Upwork, Fiverr, direct) | ~18% | +41% |
| Other (consulting, licensing, training) | ~3% | +9% |
The startup column and the freelancer column are growing roughly three times faster than the rest of the market. That is the story.
The widening gap
The dollars are growing. The number of beneficiaries is growing faster. Average earnings per beneficiary are growing slowest of all. We pulled the public Upwork and Fiverr earnings data for Pakistani users and cross-referenced with the SBP's freelancer-channel receipts:
- Pakistani freelancer headcount receiving foreign payments via banking channels rose from approximately 940,000 in FY2024 to roughly 1.3 million in FY2026, a 38% increase.
- Total freelancer receipts rose 41% over the same period, from $510 million to ~$720 million.
- Average annual earnings per active freelancer therefore moved from ~$543 to ~$554, essentially flat in dollar terms and meaningfully down in real terms after Pakistan's ongoing currency depreciation.
Translation: more Pakistanis are earning foreign currency online, but the average earner is making the same dollar income while their cost of living rose 22%. The freelance market is going through wage compression at the bottom of the skill curve, even as the top of the curve does spectacularly well.
Why the compression is happening
Three drivers, in order of impact:
-
AI commoditisation of the entry-level work. The Pakistani freelance economy is heavily weighted toward writing, design, and basic web development. These are the categories AI tools have eaten first. A logo that paid $50 in 2023 pays $20 in 2026 because the client now expects a Midjourney-augmented turnaround. We covered the "Which AI should I use" question in more detail recently.
-
Demographic dilution from training programs. PSEB's SkillUp Pakistan trained roughly 240,000 new freelancers between 2023 and 2025. Most of them entered the same categories as existing freelancers, deepening the supply pool faster than international demand could absorb it.
-
PKR weakness pricing locals down. A freelancer in Lahore can bid $8/hour and feel competitive because that translates to a real PKR wage. An Indian freelancer in Bangalore prices at $12/hour for similar work. The race-to-the-bottom dynamic shows up in Upwork bid analytics for Pakistani users: median accepted hourly rate dropped from $14 in 2023 to $11 in 2026.
Where the top of the curve is
Meanwhile, Pakistani founders are doing the best year of their lives. Funded startups exported $430 million worth of services to international clients in FY2026, up from $282 million the year prior. The Pakistan-incorporated startups now exporting at scale, in capital-raised order:
- Bazaar Technologies ($62M raised in Dec 2025, sells software to international FMCG distributors)
- PostEx ($22M, logistics SaaS for Gulf-market e-commerce)
- CreditBook ($16M, embedded finance, expanding to Gulf)
- Tajir, Atlas, Halan PK — see our Pakistan Startup Funding Tracker for the full list
These companies hire Pakistani talent at salaries indexed to USD revenue. The 25-person engineering team at Bazaar in Karachi earns roughly 3 times what a freelancer at the same experience level earns. The gap is widening, not closing.
What policymakers should be paying attention to
The Federal Board of Revenue and PSEB are correctly focused on growing the headline number, and the current 0.25% Section 154A regime is doing its job: capital is staying in Pakistan, banked through formal channels, and being taxed transparently. We've written about the mechanics in detail; the Freelancer Tax Estimator shows what an individual freelancer actually pays under the current setup.
The harder policy question is whether to optimise for headline export growth (more freelancers, even if each earns less) or per-capita value (fewer but higher-skilled freelancers, with deliberate skill-curve programs). The PSEB's training programs have implicitly chosen the first path. Pakistani Treasury would benefit more, in real-PKR terms, from the second.
A possible middle path: tier the SkillUp programs by output bracket. Train 50,000 new entrants annually instead of 80,000, but invest 3x more per capita in upskilling existing $20K-$50K-per-year freelancers into the $80K+ bracket. The dollar-export multiplier per training dollar is meaningfully higher at the upper end.
What we're watching next
The June print will tell us whether FY2026 closes above or below $4.4 billion. The new fiscal year starts July 1 with a fresh Federal Budget, and we expect Finance Minister Dr. Aurangzeb to extend the Section 154A regime through FY2027 with minor adjustments to the slabs. The interesting question is whether the budget includes any targeted incentive for high-value freelancer upskilling. If it does, this column ages well. If it doesn't, expect the same growth pattern: more freelancers, flat per-capita earnings, widening gap.
Sources
- State Bank of Pakistan, Foreign Exchange Reserves & Inflows, monthly bulletin, May 2026
- Pakistan Software Export Board, FY2025 Annual Report
- Upwork Pakistan country page analytics, publicly reported aggregate data
- Meridian48 Startup Funding Tracker, accessed 2026-05-15
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Faizan Ali Khan is the Founder and Editor of Meridian48 and the Founder of Cubitrek, a technology consulting practice. He writes about AI, Pakistan's technology economy, and the business of innovation.
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