Reporting snapshot · 10 October 2026 (Asia/Karachi). Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif inaugurated the National Technology Park in Islamabad on 10 October and renamed it Daanish IT Park. He said the government will not run the facility, which is to be handed to a private operator chosen through open bidding, and that similar parks will follow in other provinces. No cost figure, operator, bid timetable or opening date for the park had been published at the time of writing.
What happened
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif inaugurated the National Technology Park in Islamabad on 10 October 2026 — the country’s first such national facility — and announced that it would be renamed Daanish IT Park. The ceremony was attended by federal ministers, IT executives and students, Express Tribune reported. Radio Pakistan described the prime minister as calling the project a milestone for Pakistan’s progress and prosperity.
Speaking at the event, Shehbaz said the government would not be involved in running the park. “The government of Pakistan will have nothing to do with this. There will be experts and teachers here, and they will run this IT park,” he said, according to Express Tribune. He directed that the bidding be transparent and that local and international companies working in information technology and artificial intelligence be invited to compete for the right to operate the building.
The park’s foundation stone was laid in 2018, and the prime minister acknowledged “considerable delays” in completing it, saying he would not engage in political point-scoring over the past. He credited Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal, Economic Affairs Minister Ahad Khan Cheema and IT Minister Shaza Fatima Khawaja, among others, for finishing the project.
What the park is meant to contain
According to the Ministry of IT and Telecommunication, as reported by the state news agency APP, the facility is designed as a technology hub rather than a rental office block. It is to include incubation centres, innovation hubs and a startup space, laboratories for robotics and research, a special technology zone offering incentives, a modern data centre and a centre for industry–academia cooperation.
IT Minister Shaza Fatima told the ceremony that the project had reached this stage “in two and a half years” under the prime minister’s guidance. “This is not just a building. Your direction is that this will not be a rental building. It will be an entire ecosystem,” she said, according to APP. The minister said the park would support emerging technologies including artificial intelligence and cloud computing and would encourage locally produced technology products.
The prime minister said the park would help train young people in IT and AI and allow Pakistan “to compete with developed economies”. He said he expected similar facilities to spread across the country once the Islamabad park became fully operational, and that the model would be extended to Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan.
The export target and the wider digital push
The park is tied to the government’s goal of raising Pakistan’s IT exports to $25 billion by 2030, APP reported. Shaza Fatima pointed to earlier steps in the same programme: the Arfa Karim Tower in Lahore, which she said helped build an incubation and university ecosystem, along with co-working spaces, e-facilitation centres and e-libraries. She said public-private partnerships had established small technology centres in 65 districts over the past two years, with 135 centres now operating across the four provinces, AJK and Gilgit-Baltistan.
The inauguration follows other recent technology-sector announcements. On 8 October the prime minister chaired a Digital Nation Pakistan Programme review that ordered federal ministries to send digitised data to a central data centre, as KhabarWire reported. Pakistan also presented a pavilion at the AI Everything Global 2026 event in Abu Dhabi, where officials said IT exports to the United Arab Emirates had risen 42 percent to $536 million in the last fiscal year. The IT ministry has separately promoted research partnerships, including a Huawei research and development centre announced for Islamabad in September.
What is still uncertain
The public record of the inauguration is thin on specifics. No capital cost for the park, no operating date, no schedule for the bidding process and no shortlist of bidders had been published by the evening of 10 October. It is also not yet clear what legal or regulatory form the handover to a private operator will take, or how the government will measure the park’s contribution to the export target. Those details are expected to emerge once bidding begins.
Because the event was announced and covered through official channels — the state news agency APP, the state broadcaster Radio Pakistan and the IT ministry — this report could not independently verify the park’s physical condition, its tenancy plans or the number of jobs it might create. The project’s earlier delays are a reminder that announced timelines for such facilities have slipped before.
Sources & reporting notes
This is a synthesis of published material, not eyewitness reporting. Sources were reviewed on 10 October 2026.
- Express Tribune — "PM Shehbaz inaugurates IT Park to drive tech-led growth"10 October 2026 · The prime minister's remarks, the renaming, the bidding plan and the project's 2018 foundation stone.
- Associated Press of Pakistan — "Shaza Fatima credits PM's support for Islamabad IT Park"10 October 2026 · The park's planned facilities, the $25bn export target and the minister's account of the wider programme.
- Radio Pakistan — "Modern IT Parks to be established across Pakistan: PM"10 October 2026 · Official read-out of the inauguration, the new name and plans for similar parks.
