The country imported mobile phones worth $246.472 million in the first quarter (July-September) of the current fiscal year 2024-25, registering a negative growth of 18.93 percent when compared to $304.029 million during the same period of the last fiscal year 2023-24.
Pakistan imported mobile phones worth $1.898 billion during the fiscal year 2023-24, compared to $570.071 million during the fiscal year 2022-23.
In rupee term, the country imported mobile handsets worth Rs68.612 billion during the first quarter of the current fiscal year and registered negative growth of 22.86 percent when compared to Rs88.945 billion during the same period of last fiscal year.
Pakistan’s mobile phone imports increased by 29.32 percent on a Month-on-Month (MoM) basis in September 2024 and stood at $102.629 million compared to imports of $79.360 million in August 2024, according to the data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).
Year-on-Year (YoY) basis, mobile phone imports witnessed negative growth of 17.62 percent when compared to $124.576 million in September 2023.
The overall telecom imports into the country stood at $374.410 million during July-September 2024 and registered 6.17 per cent negative growth compared to $399.048 million during July-September 2023.
Overall telecom imports increased by 28.92 percent on a MoM basis in September 2024 and stood at $153.144 million compared to imports of $118.787 million in August 2024. On a YoY basis, overall telecom imports witnessed negative growth of 3.53 percent when compared to $158.755 million in September 2023.
The local manufacturing/assembling plants manufactured/ assembled 20.44 million mobile handsets during the first eight months (January-August) of the calendar year 2024, compared to 1.1 million imported commercially.
Official data revealed that the locally manufactured/ assembled 1.49 million mobile handsets in August compared to 0.1 million imported commercially.
The locally manufactured/assembled 20.44 million mobile phone handsets included 7.71 million 2G and 12.73 million smartphones.
Besides, as per the PTA’s data, 62 percent of mobile devices are smartphones, and 38 percent are 2G on the Pakistan network.
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Gov should massively reduce taxes (even make it zero in some cases) on locally assembled electronics while massively pumping tariffs on imported electronics so that companies invest in local supply chains and assembly plants and overall localization.
How do you think the Local Assembly of Phones was made Lucrative in the first place? They cannot reduce Tax to Zero cuz ultimately the components are still imported hence dollars are spent so making tax Zero would worsen our Balance of Payment crisis. They have already done what they could, which is make import of fully Assembled Phone Expensive by increasing Duties and rationalize the duties on Locally assembled phones.
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