PTA says local plants have manufactured 19.7m mobile phone handsets in 11 months

ISLAMABAD: Local manufacturing plants have manufactured/assembled 19.7 million phone handsets during the first 11 months – January to November 2022 - compared to 1.37 million commercially imported phone handsets, says the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).

The local manufacturing plants have manufactured/assembled 1.56 million mobile phone handsets in November 2022.

The manufactured/assembled mobile phones 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 stood at 10.26 million in 2021 compared to 24.51 million in 2020, revealed the official data of the PTA.

The locally manufactured/assembled 19.7 million mobile phones included 11.5 million 2G and 8.2 million smart phones.

Besides, as per the PTA data, 55 percent mobile devices are smart phones and 45 percent 2G on Pakistan network.

However, despite the increase in local production of mobile phones, Pakistan imported mobile phones worth $ 290.570 million during the first five months (July-November) of the current fiscal year 2022-23, registering a negative growth of 66.08 percent when compared to $ 856.730 million during the same period of last year.

Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) data shows that on a month-on-month (MoM) basis mobile phone imports registered 1.92 percent negative growth and stood at $ 64.520 million in November 2022 when compared to $ 65.780 million in October 2022.

Mobile phone imports registered 69.57 percent negative growth on a year-on-year (YoY) basis in November 2022 when compared to $ 212.058 million during the same month of last year.

The overall telecom imports into the country stood at $ 455.731 million during the first five months of fiscal year 2022-23 and registered 59.67 percent negative growth when compared to $ 1.130 billion during the same period of last fiscal 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