Local manufacturing plants have manufactured or assembled 19.7 million phone handsets during the first 11 months – January to November 2022 – compared to 1.37 million commercially imported phone handsets, according to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).
In November 2022, local manufacturing facilities produced or assembled 1.56 million mobile phone handsets.
Local manufacturing facilities produced or assembled 24.66 million mobile phones in 2021 compared to 13.05 million in 2020, a historic rise of 88 percent. According to the PTA’s official figures, commercial mobile phone imports decreased to 10.26 million in 2021 from 24.51 million in 2020.
The locally manufactured/assembled 19.7 million mobile phones included 11.5 million 2G and 8.2 million smart phones.
Besides, as per the PTA data, 55 percent mobile devices are smart phones and 45 percent 2G on Pakistan network.
However, despite the increase in local production of mobile phones, Pakistan imported mobile phones worth $ 290.570 million during the first five months (July-November) of the current fiscal year 2022-23, registering a negative growth of 66.08 percent when compared to $ 856.730 million 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 1.92 percent negative growth and stood at $ 64.520 million in November 2022 when compared to $ 65.780 million in October 2022.
