16.7m cell phones manufactured locally in nine months: PTA

ISLAMABAD: Local manufacturing plants have manufactured/assembled 16.7 million phones handsets during the first nine months – January to September 2022 - compared to 1.24 million commercially imported phones handsets, says Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).

The local manufacturing plants have manufactured/assembled 1.09 million mobile phones handsets in September 2022.

The manufactured/assembled mobile phones handsets by local manufacturing plants during the calendar year 2021 stood at 24.66 million compared to 13.05 million in 2020 - a landmark increase of 88 percent.

The commercial imports of mobile phones handsets stood at 10.26 million in 2021 compared to 24.51 million in 2020, revealed the official data of PTA.

The locally manufactured/assembled 16.7 million mobile phones handsets included 9.46 million 2G and 7.24 million smart phones.

Pakistan’s local mobile phone production surpasses imports: PTA

Besides, as per the PTA data, 54 percent mobile devices are smart phones and 46 percent 2G on Pakistan network.

However, despite the increase in local production of mobile phones, Pakistan imported mobile phones worth $ 160.271 million during the first quarter (July-September) of the current fiscal year 2022-23, registering a negative growth of 67.62 percent when compared to $ 494.960 million during the same period of last year.

Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) data showed that on a month-on-month (MoM) basis mobile phone imports registered 7.38 percent negative growth and stood at $ 58.407 million in September 2022 when compared to $ 63.06 million in August 2022.

Mobile phone imports registered 72.06 percent negative growth on a year-on-year (YoY) basis in September 2022 when compared to $209.013 million during the same month of last year. The successful implementation of Device Identification Registration and Blocking System (DIRBS) along with conducive government policies including the mobile manufacturing policy has created a favourable environment for mobile device manufacturing in Pakistan.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022