The local manufacturing plants have manufactured/assembled 14.08 million mobile handsets during the first six months (January-June) of 2022 compared to 1.14 million imported commercially, says Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).
The local manufacturing plants manufactured/assembled 1.67 million mobile handsets in June 2022.
The locally manufactured/assembled 14.08 million mobile handsets include 8.06 million 2G and 6.02 million smartphones. Further, as per the PTA data, 54 percent mobile devices are smartphones, and 46 percent are 2G on the Pakistan network.
The manufactured/assembled mobile handsets by local manufacturing plants during the calendar year 2021 stood at 24.66 million compared to 13.05 million in 2020.
The commercial imports of mobile handsets stood at 10.26 million in 2021 compared to 24.51 million in 2020, revealed the official data of PTA.
However, despite the increase in the local production of mobile phones, Pakistan imported mobile phones worth $1.978 billion during the fiscal year 2021-22, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).
The overall telecom imports into the country during the period under review i.e. fiscal year 2021-22 increased by 3.52 percent, going up from $2.593 billion in July-June 2020-21 to $2.684 billion during the same period of last period.
On a month-on-month basis, imports of mobile phones into Pakistan decreased by 76.52 percent during June 2022 and stood at $32.221 million when compared to $137.213 million imported in May 2022, the PBS data revealed.