Negative growth of 67.35pc YoY: Mobile phones worth $414.801m imported in 7 months

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan imported mobile phones worth $414.801 million during the first seven months (July-January) of current fiscal year 2022-23, registering a negative growth of 67.35 percent when compared to $1.270 billion during the same period last year.

Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) data shows that on a month-on-month (MoM) basis mobile phone imports registered 28.12 percent growth and stood at $51.960 million in January 2023 when compared to $72.291 million in December 2022.

Mobile phone imports registered 71.10 percent negative growth on a year-on-year (YoY) basis in January 2023 when compared to $179.765 million during the same month of last year.

The overall telecom imports into the country stood at $644.127 million during the period under of the current fiscal year 2022-23 and registered 61.01 percent negative growth when compared to $1.652 billion during the same period of last fiscal year.

Negative growth of 66.73pc YoY: H1 mobile phones import stands at $362.862m

However, on a YoY basis, the overall telecom imports registered a negative growth of 65.75 percent and stood at $78.337 million when compared to $228.712 million in January 2022. On MoM basis overall telecom imports registered 28.79 percent growth in January 2023 when compared to $110.165 million during December 2022.

Other apparatus imports stood at $229.326 million in July-January 2022-23 and registered 39.90 percent negative growth when compared to $381.603 million during the same period of the last fiscal year.

On a year-on-year basis, other apparatus remained at $26.377 million in January 2023 and registered 46.11 percent negative growth when compared to $48.947 million in January 2022 and registered 30.36 percent negative growth on MoM basis when compared to $37.874 million in December 2022.

Local manufacturing plants have manufactured/assembled 21.94 million phones handsets during the calendar year 2022 compared to 24.66 million in 2021, ie, registered a decline, attributable to issues in imports on account of restricting the opening of letters of credit (LCs).

Local manufacturing plants manufactured/assembled 21.94 million phones handsets during the calendar year 2022 –compared to 1.53 million commercially imported phones handsets, the PTA said.

The local manufacturing plants manufactured/assembled 2.24 million mobile phone handsets in December 2022. The manufactured/assembled mobile phone 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 phone handsets stood at 10.26 million in 2021 compared to 24.51 million in 2020.

The locally manufactured/assembled 21.94 million mobile phones handsets included 13.15 million 2G and 8.79 million smartphones. Besides, as per the PTA data, 56 percent of mobile devices are smartphones, and 44 percent are 2G on the Pakistan network.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023