ISLAMABAD: Pakistan imported mobile phones worth $1.684 billion during July-April (2020-21) compared to $1.027 billion during July-April (2019-20), showing growth of 63.98 percent, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) data.
The overall telecom imports into the country during the period under review increased by 43.76 percent by going up from $1.337 billion in 2019-20 to $1.923 billion during the current fiscal year.
On year-on-year basis, the imports of mobile phones into Pakistan increased by 212.88 percent during April 2021, when compared to the imports of the same month of last year.
The mobile phone imports during April 2021 were recorded at $148.99 million against the imports of $47.619 million during April 2020, the PBS data revealed.
On month-on-month basis, the mobile phone imports decreased by 33.64 percent in April 2021, when compared to the imports of $224.503 million in March 2021.
On year-on-year basis, the overall telecom imports into Pakistan increased by 111.87 percent during April 2021, when compared to the imports of the same month of last year.
The telecom imports during April 2021 were recorded at $193.139 million against the imports of $91.159 million during April 2020.
On month-on-month basis, the overall telecom imports declined by 36.38 percent in April 2021, compared to the imports of $303.58 million in March 2021.
Other apparatus imports during July-April (2020-21) increased by 7.49 percent by going up from $401.430 million in 2019-20 to $431.517 million during the current fiscal year.
According to the sector experts, the implementation of Device Identification, Registration and Blocking System (DIRBS) has resulted in significant increase in legal import of mobile devices.
Further it helped in establishment of over 33 local assembly plants of mobile devices.
These plants have produced over 25 million mobile devices including 4G smart phones, since implementation of the system.
With the successful execution of the DIRBS, the local assembly industry has evolved from infancy to well growing stage, with significant growth seen in local assembly of smart phones.
In 2019, only 119,639 smartphones were assembled locally, whereas, in 2020, the number of such devices grew to 2.1 million.
At the end of the second month of 2021, 1.21 million smartphones have so far been assembled in Pakistan.
In the light of this impact of the DIRBS, the government of Pakistan has introduced a comprehensive Mobile Manufacturing Policy to encourage and attract manufactures to Pakistan and establish their plants.
The PTA has issued Mobile Device Manufacturing (MDM) Regulations and has started receiving mobile device manufacturing applications.
This initiative will help create more jobs in this technical sector, as well as enable consumers to buy locally-manufactured mobile devices.
Pakistan has the distinction of implementing the world’s first open-source, full-fledged DIRBS.
This system has the ability to identify all IMEIs latched on Pakistan's mobile networks and to categorise them based on their compliant status.
The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) with the help of the PTA has collected around Rs100 billion, since, the implementation of the DIRBS as mobile devices imports via legal channels increased by around 70 percent.
According to the data released by the PTA, the import of mobile devices via legal channels has increased from 17.2 million in 2018 to 28.02 million in 2019 (63 percent increase) due to the implementation of the DIRBS.
The FBR has stated that recently, in a meeting with the PTA, it transpired that the passengers can register up to five mobile phones on their passports and in case of high-end phones of more than USD 500, the difference of duty/taxes between passport and CNIC registration is about Rs 9,000.
Accordingly, in order to correct this anomaly and to limit the registration of mobile phone against passport up to one set, the WeBOC module was modified through CRF (change request form).
However, during the process, the exemption of withholding tax was also deleted and thus, now the system was showing total taxes on passport as Rs 36,720.
The FBR has stated that the issue has been taken up with Director (R&A) Karachi and the team is reviewing the module to resolve the issue and restore the previous amount of leviable duty/taxes. The issue will be resolved Sunday afternoon.
Due to this glitch in the system, all those who paid more duty would be refunded the excess amount forthwith.
The FBR regrets inconvenience caused to those who had to pay excess duty and taxes.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021
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