ISLAMABAD: The local manufacturing plants have manufactured/assembled 9.72 million phones handsets during the first four months (January-April) of 2022 compared to 0.86 million imported commercially, says Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).

The local manufacturing plants have manufactured/assembled 2.56 million mobile phone handsets in April 2022 against 0.25 million commercially imported.

The manufactured/assembled mobile phones handsets by local manufacturing plants during the calendar year 2021 stood at 24.66 million compared to 13.05 million in 2020, i.e. 88 percent increase.

The commercial imports of mobile phones handsets stood at 10.26 million in 2021 compared to 24.51 million in 2020, revealed the official data of PTA.

Jul-Apr mobile phone import grows 7.43pc to $1.81bn YoY

The locally manufactured/assembled 9.72 million mobile phones handsets include 5.69 million 2G and 4.03 million smartphones. Further, as per the PTA data, 53 percent mobile devices are smartphones and 47 percent 2G on the Pakistan network.

However, despite the increase in a local production of mobile phones, Pakistan imported mobile phones worth $1.810 billion during the first ten months (July-April) of 2021-22 compared to $1.684 billion during the same period of last year, registering a growth of 7.43 percent, despite the increase in local manufacturing, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).

The overall telecom imports into the country during the period under review (July-April) 2021-22 increased by 14.05 percent by going up from $2.116 billion in July-April 2020-21 to $2.413 billion during the same period of last period.

The PTA data revealed that the local manufacturing trend reflects a positive uptake on the PTA’s Mobile Device Manufacturing (MDM) Authorization regulatory regime.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022