Local manufacturing plants have manufactured/assembled 2.35 million mobile handsets during February 2023 compared to 0.19 million imported commercially.
The locally manufactured/assembled mobile handsets included 1.87 million 2G and 0.48 million smartphones.
Local manufacturing plants manufactured/assembled 21.94 million mobile handsets during the calendar year 2022 compared to 24.66 million in 2021 i.e. registered a decline, attributable to issues in imports on account of restrictions on the opening of letters of credit (LCs).
During the calendar year 2022, 1.53 million mobile handsets were commercially imported, according to Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).
Besides, as per the PTA data, 57 percent of mobile devices are smartphones, and 43 percent are 2G on the Pakistan network.
Pakistan imported mobile phones worth $447.855 million during the first eight months (July-January) of the current fiscal year 2022-23, registering a negative growth of 68.29 percent compared to imports of $1.412 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 36.39 percent negative growth and stood at $33.054 million in February 2023 compared to $51.960 million in January 2023.