Pakistan's commerce ministry fears that confidential state information may be leaking into foreign artificial-intelligence tools. Jam Kamal Khan, the federal commerce minister, has voiced concern about officials using publicly available overseas AI platforms for sensitive government work. In response, he has ordered the development of an integrated, secure, AI-powered digital system for his ministry, built on domestic infrastructure and designed to keep the country's trade data at home.
The minister held separate meetings with the Pakistan Digital Authority (PDA) and the management of Sky47, a data-centre company, according to a statement issued on Friday. Discussions centred on treating government data as a national asset, strengthening sovereign cloud and data-centre capacity, enabling secure data exchange and using AI to shape trade and export policy.
Mr Khan called for clear guidelines, greater awareness and secure domestic alternatives. Without them, he warned, sensitive official correspondence and institutional data could end up on unauthorised external systems. The ministry sits on a vast store of information. It holds records on thousands of tariff and product lines, exporters, foreign markets, trade bodies, chambers of commerce, business associations and overseas trade missions. The minister said this scattered data must be standardised, integrated and made available to authorised users in secure, decision-friendly formats.
"Pakistan's trade data is a valuable national asset," Mr Khan said. "It must be protected, properly classified and transformed into actionable intelligence for exporters, businesses and policymakers."
He wants the ministry's wings, attached departments and the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan linked with chambers, trade associations and trade officers serving in more than 55 countries. He also called for the ministry's various online portals to be merged into a single view of trade activity and market intelligence.
The PDA briefed the minister on an emerging national framework covering data governance, data exchange, enterprise architecture and cloud adoption. Government data would be classified as open, shared, restricted or personally identifiable, with ownership and control remaining with the relevant ministries and public bodies.
Under the proposed approach, departments would share only the information needed for a specific purpose rather than handing over entire datasets. The planned exchange mechanism is meant to make access between departments secure, standardised and traceable while guarding confidential and personal data against misuse.
Participants also discussed a national digital master plan. Under it, sector-specific digitalisation roadmaps would be drawn up in co-ordination with federal and provincial governments, public institutions and the private sector. AI sits at the heart of the minister's vision. He said it could analyse trade trends, spot export opportunities and help prepare policy recommendations for specific markets. An indigenous platform trained on authorised government and sectoral data, he argued, could become a powerful tool for economic planning and public services.
The meeting with Sky47 focused on Pakistan's data-centre capacity, sovereign cloud services, cyber-security, disaster recovery and the growing computing demands of AI. The company outlined its existing infrastructure and plans to expand secure hosting capacity within the country.
The minister was told that modern data centres could offer reliable services meeting international standards while cutting the costs and security risks of running numerous small, fragmented departmental facilities. The talks also covered energy-efficient cooling, intelligent storage, metadata management, data-fabric technology and the differing computing needs of conventional applications, AI models and future quantum workloads.
Mr Khan stressed that Pakistan must build enough local capacity to host critical national data domestically. Doing so, he said, would safeguard data sovereignty while encouraging innovation and investment in cloud computing, AI and digital services.
Procurement reform was also on the agenda. Participants said cloud-procurement frameworks should let government bodies buy infrastructure, platforms and software as services without lengthy, outdated procedures. The minister backed closer co-ordination among the PDA, the commerce ministry, the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority, IPO Pakistan and others to support start-ups and innovators.
A Pakistani version of an Open Network for Digital Commerce was discussed too. Such a network could link producers, exporters, logistics firms, financial institutions and consumers digitally, opening new opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises.
Mr Khan directed his teams to continue technical consultations and draw up practical proposals on data integration, sovereign cloud adoption, AI-enabled trade intelligence and digital-commerce infrastructure. The ambitions are broad, and the detailed plans, costs and timelines have yet to be set out.