ISLAMABAD: Pakistan imported mobile phones worth $101.864 million during the first two months (July-August) of the current fiscal year 2022-22, and registered a negative growth of 64.38 per cent when compared to $285.947 million during the same period of the last year.
Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS)’s data shows that on a month-on-month (MoM) basis mobile phone imports registered 62.51 per cent growth and remained $63.060 million in August 2022 when compared to $38.804 million in July 2022.
Mobile phone imports registered 62.16 per cent negative growth on a year-on-year basis in August 2022 when compared to $166.710 million during the same month of last year.
The overall telecom imports into the country remained $169.438 million during the first two months of the current fiscal year 2022-23 and registered 53.84 per cent negative growth when compared to $367.051 million during the same period of last fiscal year.
However, on a YoY basis, the overall telecom registered a negative growth of 51.311 per cent and remained $101.537 when compared to $208.558 million in July-August 2021-22. On MoM basis overall telecom imports registered 49.54 per cent growth and remained $101.537 million in August 2022 when compared to $67.901 million during July 2022.
Other apparatus imports remained at $67.574 million in July-August 2022 and registered 16.68 per cent negative growth when compared to $81.104 million during the same period of last fiscal year.
On a year-on-year basis other apparatus remained $38.477 million in August 2022 and registered 8.06 per cent negative growth when compared to $41.848 million in August 2021 and registered 32.24 per cent on a MoM basis when compared to $29.0097 million in July 2022
The local manufacturing plants have manufactured/ assembled 14.94 million phone handsets during the first seven months (January-July) of 2022 compared to 1.16 million imported commercially, says the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).
The local manufacturing plants have manufactured/ assembled 0.86 million mobile phones handsets in July 2022.
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 per cent 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 the PTA.
The locally-manufactured/ assembled 14.94 million mobile phones handsets include 8.6 million 2G and 6.33 million smartphones.
Further as per the PTA data, 54 per cent mobile devices are smartphones and 46 per cent 2G on Pakistan network.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022