ISLAMABAD: Between July and November of the fiscal year 2023-24, the country imported mobile phones totaling $616 million. It marked a huge 112% increase from the $290 million cellphones imported in the same period of the previous year.
In November 2023, Pakistan’s mobile phone imports declined by 11.69% compared to October 2023, amounting to $146.54 million instead of the previous $165.94 million.
The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) has mentioned this development in its latest foreign trade data.
Looking at the year-on-year figures for November 2023, there was an impressive 127% surge in mobile phone imports, totaling $64.49 million in November 2022.
The broader telecom imports for July-November 2023 hit $794.44 million, witnessing a noteworthy 74% increase from the $455.62 million recorded during the same timeframe in the previous fiscal year.
In November 2023, overall telecom imports experienced a 70% year-on-year growth, reaching $187.58 million compared to $110 million in November 2022.
However, there was a 9.73% negative month-on-month growth compared to October 2023’s $207.78 million.
A leader of the Pakistan Mobile Phone Manufacturers Association highlighted the improved opening of letters of credit (LCs) contributing to increased imports of mobile handset parts.
Currently, 31 mobile manufacturing companies operate in Pakistan, resulting in about 95% of mobile handsets sold in the country being domestically made.
Local manufacturing plants assembled 15.66 million mobile handsets between January and October 2023, significantly surpassing the 1.28 million imported commercially. Specifically, in October 2023, 2.64 million mobile handsets were assembled domestically compared to 0.19 million commercially imported units.
In contrast, during the entire calendar year of 2022, local manufacturing plants produced 21.94 million mobile handsets, down from the 24.66 million in 2021.
This decline was attributed to issues in imports due to restricted opening of LCs. The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) reported that around 21.94 million mobile handsets were assembled in 2022, while 1.53 million were commercially imported.
