Local Manufacturing of Mobiles Declines by 43% in January

Local manufacturing plants in Pakistan manufactured 0.87 million mobiles during January 2023 compared to 0.07 million imported commercially during the same month. The locally manufactured/assembled mobiles included 0.56 million 2G and 0.3 million smartphones, according to data issued by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA). The number of mobiles manufactured in January 2023 was down by 43 percent compared to 1.53 million mobile handsets manufactured/assembled in the same month of the previous year. The month-on-month decline was even steeper as the number of mobiles manufactured in January 2023 decreased by over 61 percent compared to 2.24 million handsets manufactured in December 2022. It is pertinent to mention here that local manufacturing plants manufactured/assembled 21.94 million handsets in 2022 compared to 24.66 million in 2021. The decline in manufacturing is primarily due to import restrictions. Pakistan imported mobile phones worth $414.801 million during the first seven months (July-January) of the current fiscal year 2022-23 (FY23), registering a negative growth of 67.35 percent compared to $1.270 billion 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 28.12 percent negative growth and stood at $51.960 million in January 2023 compared to $72.291 million in December 2022.