By Irfan Ahmed ISLAMABAD, Feb. 03 (INP-Wealth) Pakistan has managed to secure the top slot in Asia and ranks 4^th in the world in the growth of freelance earnings, shortly behind the US at 78 percent growth, the UK at 59 percent growth and Brazil with only 1% higher. The country’s current freelance market consists of more than one million individuals working in various specialized fields. Freelancers have registered a remarkable growth in numbers and income during the recent years. Telecom infrastructure expansion across the country has played a major role in the freelancers’ development. Freelancers from Pakistan have become increasingly popular due to quality of work and cost-effectiveness compared with those from other competing countries. Pakistani freelancers are spread across various fields like content management, search engine optimization, social media management, logo design, creative design, and website development, etc. Federal Minister for Information Technology Syed Amin Ul Haq has set $3 billion target in export remittance inflows from Pakistani IT freelancers in the next three years. The minister has emphasized the need for prioritizing all possible measures to ensure sustainable growth of gig-economy in Pakistan, said a statement issued during the National Freelancing Conference 2021 organized by the Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB). source: Pakistan Software Export Board Does freelancing help boost Pakistan’s economy? During the first quarter of FY2021-22, freelance earnings in Pakistan grew by 21.37%, surging from $87.247 million to $105.895 million compared with the first quarter of the previous fiscal year. With over 6,000 IT companies, Pakistan is one of the most financially attractive countries to outsource tech jobs in the world. In FY2020-21, $0.5 billion revenue was generated by the freelancing industry. One of the significant benefits of freelancing is that one can earn money in dollars. When people make money from abroad, it benefits the individuals and helps strengthen the local currency. It is an interesting fact that 60% of freelancers from Pakistan are between the age of 24 to 30. Since the local business market is not well-developed and doesn’t offer a platter of opportunities, they enter the freelancing industry to get the best jobs. With the help of freelancers, Pakistan’s exports of information technology grew by 47.4 percent to cross the $2 billion mark for the first time in the country’s history in FY2020-21, as against $1.44 billion in the preceding fiscal year.  Challenges facing the freelancers Pakistani freelancers are struggling and require a suitable work environment to compete in the international markets. Even established freelancers face a number of challenges. When a freelancer works with an international company, he/she faces many problems because there is no infrastructure in Pakistan that can help him/her get quick money. The Pakistani freelancing community has less payment options compared with those in other countries. Although Payoneer and MoneyGram are operating in Pakistan, the ever-popular PayPal is still not available. This leaves the majority of freelancers with no option but to rely on the local clients and stay away from the global customers for fear of not getting paid. Freelancers who are successfully finalizing big projects in their own country may fail to impress the global clients. The reason can either be their poor communication skills or grammatical errors that are evident from their proposal or previous work. That’s why some freelancers in Pakistan find it hard to persuade the worldwide clients and fail to create their own unique identity. Global freelance marketplace has not yet established in Pakistan due to which locals fail to get many projects from outside, which is the main source of income for freelancers. If Pakistan wants to move ahead in the freelancing system, it will have to overcome these problems. The Pakistani freelance market must provide jobs and attractive salary packages to the writers for their hard work. It is an encouraging development that the government has introduced a national freelance training program for training the aspiring freelancers across all provinces. Pakistan is expected to become the world's third-biggest freelancing country, raising its citizens’ living standards and the GDP.