ISLAMABAD: The country imported mobile phones worth $987.539 million during the first half (July-January) of the current fiscal year 2023-24, registering a growth of 138.08 percent when compared to $414.800 million during the same period of last fiscal year.
Pakistan’s mobile phone imports increased by 10.70 percent on a month-on-month (MoM) basis in January 2024 and stood at $194.928 million compared to imports of $176.093 million in December 2023, according to data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).
Mobile phone imports registered 275.15 percent growth on a year-on-year (YoY) basis in January 2024 when compared to $51 960 million in January 2023.
The overall telecom imports into the country stood at $ 1.243 billion during July-January 2023-24 and registered 93.06 percent growth compared to $644.056 million during the same period of the last fiscal year. On a YoY basis, the overall telecom imports registered a growth of 197.07 percent and stood at $232.709 million in January 2024 compared to $ 78.336 million in January 2023.
On a MoM basis, the overall telecom imports registered 7.60 percent growth in January 2024 compared to $216.263 million during December 2023. Local manufacturing/assembling of mobile handsets declined by around four percent during the calendar year 2023, attributable to issues in imports on account of restriction on opening letters of credit (LCs) for mobile phone accessories.
However, despite restrictions, commercial imports of mobile handsets increased during this period, official data revealed.
Local manufacturing plants have manufactured/assembled 21.28 million mobile handsets during the calendar year 2023 compared to 21.94 million during the same period of 2022 and 24.66 million in 2021. However, commercial imports increased from 1.53 million in 2022 to 1.58 million in 2023.
Further, the locally manufactured/ assembled 21.28 million mobile phones handsets included 13 million 2G and 8.28 million smartphones.
Besides, as per the PTA data, 59 per cent of mobile devices are smartphones, and 41 per cent are 2G on the Pakistan network.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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