Pakistan’s Mobile Phone Imports Surged in This Year

There was a significant increase in the number of mobile phone imports in Pakistan in the fiscal year 2023-2024.

The total value of these imports climbed to a whopping $1.898 billion. The value of mobile phone imports in the fiscal year 2022-2023 had stood at $570.071 million.

This means that there was a total growth in value of about 233%.

The Increase

In terms of rupees, Pakistan saw its mobile phone imports rise to Rs 535.690 billion in the fiscal year 2023-2024. In the previous fiscal year i.e. 2022-2023, they had been valued at Rs 136.847 billion.

This highlighted a growth of 291.45%. Furthermore, Pakistan also saw its mobile phone imports record an increase of 76.77% in June of this year on a month-on-month basis.

Data from the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) shows that the mobile phone imports in May 2024 had stood at $157.592 million, but they had increased to $278.574 million in the next month.

As far as the year-on-year (YoY) growth is concerned, mobile phone imports experienced a remarkable rise of 419.90% in June.

They had reached a value of $278.574 million, while they had been $53.582 million a year earlier.

Telecom Imports

During the fiscal year 2023-2024, there had been an increase in the overall telecom imports in Pakistan. They reached $2.366 billion, as compared to the fiscal year 2022-2023 when they had been $956.696 million.

This highlighted an increase of 147.36% in the amount of telecom imports. The overall telecom imports also recorded an increase of 232% on a year-on-year (YoY) basis.

In June 2024, they stood at $320.094 million, while they had been $96.415 million in the same month a year earlier.

There was a 51.28% increase in the overall telecom imports in June 2024 on a month-to-month (MoM) basis, which was higher than a month earlier when they had stood at $211.586 million.

More Statistics

In the first five months of this year i.e. from January to May, a total of 13.08 million mobile handsets had been produced by local manufacturing and assembling plants.

The total number of mobile handsets that were commercially imported stood at 0.76 million.

In the month of May alone, a total of 2.23 million mobile handsets were produced by local manufacturing and assembling plants. Commercial imports, on the other hand, reached 0.11 million.

It should be noted that the locally manufactured and assembled mobile handsets also included 2G devices as well as regular smartphones.

The 13.08 million figure included 8.1 million smartphones and 4.98 million 2G smartphones. Data from PTA has revealed that 39% of the mobile devices operating on the Pakistan network are 2G devices.

Meanwhile 61% of them are regular smartphones. The increase in mobile imports in the country is a positive sign. It shows that the market has continued to grow despite the tough economic situation.