In January 2023, local manufacturing plants in Pakistan produced 0.87 million mobile phones, while only 0.07 million were imported commercially during the same period. Out of the locally produced mobiles, 0.56 million were 2G phones, and 0.3 million were smartphones, as per data released by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).
However, there has been a sharp decline in mobile phone production, with a 43% drop in January 2023 compared to 1.53 million handsets manufactured in the same month of the previous year. The month-on-month decline was even steeper, with a reduction of over 61% in January 2023 compared to 2.24 million handsets produced in December 2022.
It’s worth noting that local manufacturing plants assembled 21.94 million handsets in 2022, which was down from 24.66 million in 2021. This decrease is primarily due to import restrictions, as Pakistan imported mobile phones worth $414.801 million during the first seven months (July-January) of the current fiscal year 2022-23 (FY23), which is a negative growth rate of 67.35% compared to $1.270 billion during the same period last year.
Data from the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) shows that mobile phone imports registered a 28.12% negative growth rate on a month-on-month (MoM) basis and stood at $51.960 million in January 2023 compared to $72.291 million in December 2022.
