Pakistan imported mobile phones worth $414.801 million during the first seven months (July-January) of the current fiscal year 2022-23 (FY23), registering a negative growth of 67.35 percent when compared to $1.270 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 28.12 percent negative growth and stood at $51.960 million (approximately Rs. 12.1 billion) in January 2023 when compared to $72.291 million in December 2022.
Mobile phone imports registered 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 under review (July-January FY23) 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 in January 2023 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.
Other apparatus imports stood at $229.326 million in July-January FY23 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 apparatus 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.
Local manufacturing
Local manufacturing plants manufactured/assembled 21.94 million phones during the calendar year 2022 compared to 24.66 million in 2021, the decline in production was due to issues in imports on account of restricting the opening of letters of credit (LCs).
During the calendar year 2022, 1.53 million mobile phones were commercially imported, says according to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).
The locally manufactured/assembled 21.94 million mobile phones included 13.15 million 2G and 8.79 million smartphones.
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