ISLAMABAD: Local manufacturing plants have manufactured/assembled 18.14 million mobile phone handsets during the first 10 months – from January to October 2022 — compared to 1.29 million commercially-imported handsets, says the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).

The local manufacturing plants manufactured/assembled 1.44 million mobile phone handsets in October 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 - 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, revealed the official PTA data.

The locally-manufactured/assembled 18.14 million mobile phone handsets included 10.51 million 2G and 7.63 million smartphones.

Besides, as per the PTA data, 55 percent mobile devices are smartphones and 45 percent 2G on Pakistan network.

However, despite the increase in the local production of mobile phones, Pakistan imported mobile phones worth $ 226.051 million during the first four months (July-October) of the current fiscal year 2022-23, registering a negative growth of 64.94 percent when compared to $ 644.672 million during the same period of last year.

The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) data showed that on a month-on-month (MoM) basis mobile phone imports registered 12.62 percent growth and stood at $65.780 million in October 2022 when compared to $58.407 million in September 2022.

Mobile phone imports registered 56.06 percent negative growth on a year-on-year (YoY) basis in October 2022 when compared to $149.712 million during the same month of last year.

The successful implementation of the Device Identification Registration and Blocking System (DIRBS) along with conducive government policies including the mobile manufacturing policy has created a favourable environment for mobile device manufacturing in Pakistan.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022