According to figures from the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), Pakistan imported mobile phones worth $1.860 billion in July-May (2020-21) compared to $1.138 billion in July-May (2019-20), a 63.40 percent increase.
Overall telecom imports into the country surged by 47.18 percent over the review period, rising from $1.587 billion in 2019-20 to $12.337 billion in the current fiscal year.
Imports of mobile phones into Pakistan increased by 58.03 percent year over year in May 2021 as compared to the same month the previous year.
The imports of mobile phones in May 2021 totaled $175.501 million, compared to $111.056 million in May 2020, according to PBS statistics.
In May 2021, mobile phone imports fell 17.79 percent month over month, to $148.992 million, compared to $148.992 million in April 2021.
Overall telecom imports into Pakistan climbed by 38.87 percent year over year in May 2021 as compared to the same month the previous year.
Imports of telecom equipment totaled $22.696 million in May 2021, compared to $158.925 million in May 2020.
In May 2021, overall telecom imports grew 14.27 percent month over month, reaching $193.137 million, compared to $193.137 million in April 2021.
Other apparatus imports climbed by 6.10 percent during July-May (2020-21), rising from $449.299 million in 2019-20 to $476.709 million in the current fiscal year.
The Mobile Device Production policy has been adopted, according to the Economic Survey 2019-20, to boost local manufacturing and assembly of mobile handsets. Pakistan has a low-cost labour advantage, a reasonably substantial home market of more over 178 million members, which has expanded by about 1% per month over the last year, and a tele-density of 83.3 percent.
In a few years, the government plans to make the mobile phone manufacturing industry larger than the automobile industry in terms of turnover, and employment is likely to increase dramatically.
DIRBS has resulted in a considerable increase in legal imports, as well as an increase in local manufacturing. The government has resolved to implement a comprehensive mobile manufacturing policy in order to encourage and attract mobile manufacturing companies to set up shop in Pakistan. The Federal Cabinet approved the mobile manufacturing policy in June 2020, and in light of this policy, the PTA released Mobile Device Manufacturing (MDM) Regulations on January 28, 2021.
Individual consumer taxes and tariffs, which were previously untapped sources of revenue before DIRBS, totaled Rs 13.93 billion from January to March 2021. On the commercial import side, revenue climbed from Rs 22 billion in 2018-19 to Rs 83 billion from January 2019 to November 2020. Despite the economic downturn induced by the pandemic, this is a huge rise.
Impacts of DIRBS on the economy
- PTA has blocked 175 thousand devices IMEI reported as stolen through DIRBS
- The system has also identified and blocked 26.03 million fake/replica mobile devices since 2019 identified as programmed with non-GSMA formation
- The system has been successfully able to identify cloned/duplicated IMEI, whereby 657,645 IMEI were cloned against 4.24 million MSISDN The launch of DIRBS has also had a significant impact on the development of mobile device ecosystem as companies now have a level playing field.
As per figures extracted from DIRBS, it is observed that there is substantial growth in 4G devices that are connected to local mobile networks and the pattern also shows a decline in the use of 2G, 3G devices with consumer appetite shifting towards 4G functionality devices.
This pattern listed below compliments GoP vision of digital Pakistan.
- 4G devices have seen a growth from 16 percent (Jan 2018) to 41 percent (Feb 2021)
- 3G devices have seen a drop from 19 percent (Jan 2018) to 8 percent (Feb 2021)
- 2G devices have seen a drop from 64 percent (Jan 2018) to 51 percent (Feb 2021).
