ISLAMABAD: Local plants manufactured or assembled 0.87 million mobile handsets during January of 2023 compared to 0.07 million imported commercially.

The local plants manufactured/ assembled 21.94 million phones during the calendar year 2022 compared to 24.66 million in 2021, thus they registered a decline due to issues in imports like restrictions on the opening of letters of credit (LCs).

Similarly, according to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), the local manufacturing plants manufactured/ assembled 21.94 million handsets during 2022 compared to 1.53 million commercially imported phones.

17pc tax applicable on mobile phones valuing above $200

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

As per the PTA data, 57 percent of the mobiles on the national network are smartphones, and 43 percent are equipped with 2G technology.

Pakistan imported mobile phones worth $414.801 million during the first seven months (July-January) of current fiscal year 2022-23, registering a negative growth of 67.35 percent when compared to $1.27 billion during the same period of last year.

The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) data show that mobile phone imports registered a 71.10 percent negative growth on a year-on-year (YoY) basis in January 2023 when compared to $179.765 million during the same month of last year.

The overall telecom imports into the country stood at $644.127 million during the period of the current fiscal year 2022-23 and registered 61.01 percent negative growth when compared to $1.652 billion during the same period of last fiscal year.

However, on a YoY basis the overall telecom imports registered a negative growth of 65.75 percent and stood at $78.337 million when compared to $228.712 million in January 2022. On MoM basis overall telecom imports registered 28.79 percent growth in January 2023 when compared to $110.165 million during December 2022.

Imports of other apparatuses stood at $229.326 million in July-January 2022-23 and registered 39.90 percent negative growth when compared to $381.603 million during the same period of the last fiscal year.

On a year-on-year basis, other apparatuses remained at $26.377 million in January 2023 and registered 46.11 percent negative growth when compared to $48.947 million in January 2022 and registered 30.36 percent negative growth on MoM basis when compared to $37.874 million in December 2022.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023