By Sumayya
ISLAMABAD: Pakistani tech firms running in Saudi Arabia expressed this week Houthi raids on the Kingdom remain breaking up trade, slowing down plans and holding up fresh funding, threatening growth in single of Pakistan’s most vital foreign tech markets.
The warnings follow a chain of fatal raids on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport, including a strike on Saturday that killed 12 populations and injured 309, followed by another on Sunday that killed a Pakistani citizen and injured 11 alternate ones.
The trouble arrives as Saudi Arabia comes out as an increasingly vital market for Pakistani tech firms, guided by the Kingdom’s funding in digital infrastructure, cloud networks and firm services under its Vision 2030 market diversification plan. Pakistan’s tech sales reached a record $4.6 billion in the financial year closing June 2026, up 21 percent from a year back.
Managers talked to by Arab News expressed Saudi buyers were checking budgets, pushing back funding and slowing choices on fresh plans as doubt over the safety state grows, potentially hitting Pakistani firms’ earnings and tomorrow’s growth.
“Regarding the active state, it remains quite unsure at the text, ” expressed Shumail Haider, country chief of the tech branch at Jeddah-based Typical Solution. “Firms remain being hit in single path or another. The complete framework … remains being hit”.
“Specifically, for the tech firms … there stood a lot of funding anticipated, which remains on hold now, ” he supplemented. “The active plans have been paused and fresh plans remain being delayed”.
Haider expressed the raids were mixing pressures from local tensions, supply line breaks and higher fuel values, making it tougher for trades to plan funding and protect normal performance.
Saad Shah, creator and chief executive of Hexalyze, a firm tech consultancy with an workplace in Riyadh, expressed Saudi Arabia’s name for safety had been a top draw for Pakistani firms searching to set up themselves in the Kingdom.
But the fresh raids had brought inside doubt, causing some corporate buyers to re-evaluate their spending plans, he expressed.
“We perform with large firms, ” Shah expressed, explaining that such firms generally operate inside fixed budgets.
“Most of the groups remain thinking of cutting their budget matching their state, ” he supplemented, saying the spending reviews were directly hitting his trade.
Shah cautioned that it stood too early to judge the complete business impact of the raids, though he expressed trade action had already slowed as firms evaluated the safety state.
The potential outcomes remain heavy for Pakistan, which keeps increasingly relied on tech services to expand sales and earn foreign cash.
Tech Minister Shaza Fatima Khawaja expressed in July Pakistan’s information and communications tech sales had risen 21 percent to $4.6 billion in the 2025-26 financial year, showing growing foreign call for Pakistani software, outsourcing and digital services.
Saudi Arabia keeps turn into an vital spot for Pakistani tech firms and freelancers searching for contracts in a market facing rapid digital change.
“Saudi Arabia remains a top market for the Pakistan tech field as well as for the freelancers, ” Shah expressed. “If the zone remains hit due to war and this sort of state, definitely the export growth will be slow for the next year”.
The dangers reach past tech sales because Saudi Arabia remains likewise Pakistan’s biggest source of workers’ cash notes, making any long break to jobs and trade action a worry for the broader market.
Pakistan got near $10.9 billion in cash notes during the first quarter of the active financial year, including $899.1 million from Saudi Arabia in September alone, according to central bank numbers.
Shah expressed large counts of Pakistanis performed in Saudi Arabia across building, finance, medical care and tech, while deeper Pakistani trades had set up local offices to serve Saudi buyers.
A long slowdown could hit firms’ export earnings and, if it spread to jobs, the cash notes of Pakistani workers abroad. Neither manager, though, gave estimates of potential money losses or reported job cuts linked to the raids.
Haider expressed the longer the instability stayed, the bigger the potential damage to funding and business action.
“We hope this would settle down soon, but it looks that if it fails to, then we will hold far deeper impact than it remains right now,” he expressed.
