68.29pc negative growth YoY: Mobile phones worth $447.855m imported in 8 months

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan imported mobile phones worth $447.855 million during the first eight months (July-January) of the current fiscal year 2022-23, registering a negative growth of 68.29 percent when compared to $1.412 billion 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 36.39 percent negative growth and stood at $33.054 million in February 2023 when compared to $51.960 million in January 2023.

Mobile phone imports registered 76.73 percent negative growth on a year-on-year (YoY) basis in February 2023 when compared to $142.033 million during the same month of last year.

The overall telecom imports into the country stood at $708.798 million during the period under of the current fiscal year 2022-23 and registered 62.08 percent negative growth when compared to $1.869 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 70.22 percent and stood at $64.741 million when compared to $217.396 million in February 2022. On MoM basis overall telecom imports registered 17.36 percent growth in February 2023 when compared to $78.337 million during January 2023.

Other apparatus imports stood at $260.944 million in July-February 2022-23 and registered 42.90 percent negative growth when compared to $456.967 million during the same period of the last fiscal year.

On a year-on-year basis, other apparatus remained at $31.687 million in February 2023 and registered 57.95 percent negative growth when compared to $75.364 million in February 2022 and registered 20.13 percent growth on MoM basis when compared to $26.377 million in January 2023.

Local manufacturing plants have manufactured/assem-bled 0.87 million phones handsets during January 2023 compared to 0.07 million imported commercially.

Local manufacturing plants 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 opening of letter of credits (LCs).

Local manufacturing plants have manufactured/assembled 21.94 million phones handsets during the calendar year 2022 –compared to 1.53 million commercially imported phones handsets, says Pakistan Telec-ommunication Authority (PTA).

The locally manufactured/assembled 0.87 million mobile phones handsets included 0.56 million 2G and 0.3 million smartphones.

Besides, as per the PTA data, 57 percent of mobile devices are smartphones, and 43 percent are 2G on the Pakistan network.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023