Pakistan Witnesses Increase in Mobile Phone & Telecom Imports

As per the latest data from the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), the country witnessed an increase of 138.08 percent in mobile phone imports in the first seven months of the current fiscal year. Pakistan imported mobile phones worth $987.539 million as compared to $414.800 million during the same period last year.

Moreover, the data further revealed that mobile phone imports saw an increase of 10.70 percent on a month-on-month (MoM) basis in January 2024 and stood at $194.928 million compared to imports of $176.093 million in December 2023. The country also witnessed 275.15 percent growth on a year-on-year (YoY) basis in January 2024 in comparison to $51,960 million in January 2023.

Telecom Imports:

The overall telecom imports in Pakistan stood at $1.243 billion during July-January 2023-24, witnessing 93.06 percent growth in comparison to $644.056 million during the last fiscal year.

On a YoY basis, compared to $78.336 million worth of imports in January 2023, the overall telecom imports witnessed a growth of 197.07 percent and stood at $232.709 million in January 2024. On an MoM basis, the overall telecom imports saw a 7.60 percent growth in January 2024 in contrast to $216.263 million during December 2023.

Local Mobile Manufacturing:

On the other hand, the local manufacturing/assembling of mobile handsets witnessed a decline by around four percent during 2023. The decline can be attributed to problems in imports on account of restrictions on opening letters of credit (LCs) for mobile phone components.

Local manufacturing plants have managed to assemble 21.28 million mobile phones during 2023 as compared to 21.94 million in 2022 and 24.66 million in 2021. Moreover, it is pertinent to mention here that the locally assembled 21.28 million mobile phones are comprised of13 million 2G and 8.28 million smartphones.