Pakistan’s Mobile Phone Imports Increased 110% in 2019: Report

Successful implementation of the new mobile phone registration system by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has resulted in a significant increase in the commercial import of mobile phones.

According to statistics from the media, the commercial import of mobile phones has increased by 110 percent in one year. In 2018, 9,564,424 mobile phones were imported, whereas, in 2019, the number stands at 19,834,465 mobiles.

The documents say that a substantial decrease in illegal imports and the smuggling of mobile phones were recorded.

At the local level, the production of mobile devices has been recorded with an increase of 72 percent. Since the introduction of the mobile phone registration, custom duties of more than Rs. 1.27 billion have been collected.

The government has been taking steps to increase domestic manufacturing of mobile phone devices as well.

PTA has blocked millions of devices with unregistered International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) numbers. The new system has helped the government generate revenue from the legal import of cellular phones.


  • phones are still being imported illegally and phone imports have decreased after the stupid DIRBS.
    imei of the illegal phones is changed to imei of small approved phones and then they are sold in the market

    • No doubt the phones are still being imported illegally, but the reported numbers clearly show that there is a significant increase in imports of phone from legal channels. And thr decision of implementing DIRBS wasn’t stupid, but the system is not perfect and should be improved.

      Furthermore the high taxes definitely has brought down the sales of the smartphones. The decision of taxing mobile with such high rates is totally illogical and the taxes should be decreased.

      • the decision of implementing dirbs was not stupid,agreed.
        but the whole system is stupid,it looks like there was no initial planning at all for this system.
        phone costs 20000 and registration costs 32000,nonsense!
        who would like to import a phone with an unknown tax amount?
        my friend’s father is in kuwait and he used to send phones from there every season (legally) and you still had to pay the customs but now besides custom charges there is this new PTA tax.he does not send the phones now.

        • I agree that taxation rate is high. A 10-15% tax would have been sufficient or just a 17% sales tax. 2000 tax on a 20k phone can be justified but 8k-12k tax is just stupidity. And agree on the second part too. The concept of DIRBS isn’t ba itself but it seems that the execution was pathetic.

  • PTA and Tax authorities implementing UNJUST amount of taxes on smartphones shows what kind of illiterate people are working in these organizations… They should be ashamed of themselves.

    We expected better from this government but sadly the decision makers employed in these organizations are same old fools.


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