Pakistan Sets Eye on PTV and PBC Digitisation

Pakistan’s FY2026-27 Annual Plan targets full PTV and PBC digitisation and a new National Centre for Brands Development, but offers no funding, timelines, or implementation detail.

Pakistan’s government has announced one of its most sweeping media modernisation targets in recent memory, yet the plan raises more questions than it answers. According to the Annual Plan 2026-27, the government intends to convert the entire analogue terrestrial broadcasting infrastructure of Pakistan Television (PTV) and the Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation (PBC) into a fully digital network within the upcoming fiscal year.

What is missing, however, is almost everything required to actually deliver on that promise. The document provides no implementation timeline, no technical partnership arrangements, no procurement processes, and no budgetary allocations for a transition that would span dozens of stations across the country. This is not a minor oversight.

The Information Ministry’s development plan for 2026-27 focuses on upgrading Pakistan Television Corporation, Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation, and Associated Press of Pakistan Corporation, and also includes AI-based strategic communication training for Information Group officers and media professionals, as well as solarisation of selected PBC and PTV stations to reduce operational costs.

The Standing Committee on Information and Broadcasting has already endorsed 14 projects worth Rs12.831 billion under PSDP 2026-27.

Still, the partial work carried out in FY2025-26 illustrates the scale of what remains. Only three PTV stations and a handful of PBC transmission centres were upgraded during the outgoing fiscal year.

Large portions of the national broadcasting network continue to run on analogue infrastructure, a technological gap that keeps Pakistan well behind regional peers in media delivery, signal quality, and broadcasting reach.

The FY2026-27 plan also proposes the establishment of a National Centre for Brands Development (NCBD), designed to strengthen Pakistan’s national and international image, particularly in alignment with the country’s export-oriented growth strategy.

As with the digitisation initiative, no detailed structure, funding plan, or operational roadmap has been outlined in the available documents.

A third initiative, a Creative and Culture Industry strategy, is also proposed under the same framework. The strategy aims to promote Pakistan’s cultural and digital content sectors internationally, supporting cultural diplomacy and expanding the country’s global media footprint. Again, no regulatory support structure or financing mechanism has been specified.

The announcements land against the backdrop of a tightly constrained federal budget. Pakistan’s interest payments in FY2026 reached Rs8.2 trillion, approximately 47 percent of total federal expenditure, leaving every other government priority to compete for what remained.

In that fiscal environment, ambitious media reform targets without attached funding carry a familiar risk: they become aspirational statements rather than actionable policy.

Whether the government can deliver full analogue-to-digital conversion, launch a credible national branding institution, and build an international cultural industries strategy within a single fiscal year, with no published roadmap, will depend on execution capacity that the available documents have not yet demonstrated.