Web Desk
The smart phone manufacturing sector will grow even bigger than Pakistan’s automobile sector in next ten years and its export revenues might be equal to country’s textile sector, hoped Inustries Minister, Hammad Azhar on Saturday.
” Effective and well-conceived policies of the present government have started yielding positive results and contributing strongly to industrial revolution through robust economic growth,” Hammad Azhar claimed while inaugurating a smartphone assembly plant in eastern city of Lahore.
Pakistan’s mobile phone manufacturing industry has lately witnessed an encouraging trend with the production of 1.21 million mobile phones in the first two months of 2021. These phones were manufactured at the 33 local mobile devices assembly plants in Pakistan.
According to data available with Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), the country produced 2.1 million smartphone devices in 2020 and just 119,639 in 2019.
Referring to the inflow of smuggled phones into Pakistan just two years ago, the minister said , when PTI came into government in 2018, around 70 to 80 per cent of smart phones sold in the local markets were smuggled lot. Introduction of DIRBS (Mobile Devices Identification, Registration and Blocking System) under which no mobile phone could be activated in Pakistan without clearing/paying all relevant duties and taxes, had helped curb this problem.
“We have also removed all the reservations and apprehensions of the traders and all other stakeholders in this regard and due to effective policies of the government, there is no smuggled phone in the local markets and the government is collecting 60 to 70 billion rupees duty/tax from mobile phones. These measures also created ample space in the local market for the local manufacturers of smart phones,” Hammad Azhar said.
Pakistan government has recently introduced Mobile Phones Manufacturing Policy-2020 and now five major players of this sector are setting up their manufacturing units in Pakistan.
“This is our landmark journey and now we are moving from local market towards export of smart phones,” Hammad said and cited that Vietnam’s annual export revenues from mobile phones export stood at US $ 45 billion, which forms 25 per cent of its GDP.
With the successful execution of DIRBS, the local assembly industry has evolved from infancy to well-growing stage, with significant growth seen in the local assembly of smartphones
After the establishmen of Airlink Assembly plant in Lahore, Vivo and Advance Telecom are t will soon establish their manufacturing units in Faisalabad and Karachi respectively.
PTA also received several mobile device manufacturing applications after finalizing its mobile device manufacturing regulations which “will help create more jobs in this technical sector, as well as enable consumers to buy locally manufactured mobile devices.”
Pakistan’s telecom sector offers attractive investment opportunities as it boasts of 178 million mobile phone subscribers with 93 million 3G-4G users, according to the January 2021 data.
Pakistan is also set to launch 5G mobile phone connectivity by December 2022 following a successful trial by PTA in February 2021.
