Local manufacturing plants have produced/assembled 21.94 million phones during the calendar year 2022, down by 11 percent as compared to 24.66 million in 2021, according to Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).
The decline was attributed to issues in imports on account of restricted letters of credit (LCs). In comparison, Pakistan commercially imported 1.53 million handsets during the period.Â
Local plants manufactured/assembled 2.24 million handsets in December 2022 alone. The manufactured/assembled handsets by local plants during the calendar year 2021 were at 24.66 million compared to 13.05 million in 2020 – a landmark increase of 88%.
The commercial imports of mobile phone handsets stood at 10.26 million in 2021 compared to 24.51 million in 2020.
The locally manufactured/assembled 21.94 million mobile phones included 13.15 million 2G handsets and 8.79 million smartphones.
Besides, as per PTA’s data, 56% of mobile devices are smartphones, and 44% are 2G on the Pakistan network.
However, despite the increase in the local production of mobile phones, Pakistan imported mobile phones worth $362.862 million during the first half of the current fiscal year 2022-23, registering a decline of 66.73% when compared to $1.090 billion during the same period of last year.
Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) data shows that on a month-on-month (MoM) basis mobile phone imports registered 12.04% growth and stood at $72.291 million in December 2022 when compared to $64.520 million in November 2022.
Mobile phone imports registered 69.10% negative growth on a year-on-year (YoY) basis in December 2022 when compared to $233.917 million during the same month of last year.
The overall telecom imports into the country stood at $565.896 million during the first half of the current fiscal year 2022-23 and registered 60.24% negative growth when compared to $1.423 billion during the same period of last fiscal year.
However, on a YoY basis, the overall telecom imports registered a negative growth of 62.43% and stood at $110.165 million when compared to $293.193 million in December 2021.
On a MoM basis, overall telecom imports registered 0.03% growth in December 2022 when compared to $110.136 million during November 2022.
Other apparatus imports stood at $203.035 million in July-December 2022 and registered 38.97% negative growth when compared to $323.656 million during the same period of the last fiscal year.
On a year-on-year basis, other apparatus remained at $37.874 million in December 2022 and registered 36.11% negative growth when compared to $59.276 million in December 2021 and registered 16.97% negative growth on a MoM basis when compared to $45.616 million in November 2022.
