Pakistan has imported mobile phones worth $101.864 million during the first two months (July-August) of the current fiscal year 2022-23, hence, registering a negative growth of 64.38 percent when compared to $285.947 million of mobile phone imports during the same period of the last year.
Mobile Phone Imports Register Growth on a Month-on-month Basis
According to the data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), mobile phone imports registered 62.51 percent growth on a month-on-month (MoM) basis and stood at $63.060 million in August 2022 as compared to $38.804 million in July 2022. Likewise, on a year-on-year (YoY) basis, mobile phone imports registered 62.16 percent negative growth in August 2022 as compared to $166.710 million during the same month of last year.
Amid all the political and economical chaos, this is a very surprising figure as the import of phones never goes down. The reason behind these drastic declines in smart phone imports has nothing to do with the fluctuation in demand but rather the government policies of reducing national imports. To save the country from bankruptcy, the government has banned multiple forums of imports and has implemented increased taxes on imports to increase the national reserves and keep the money in the country.
Read more: Budget 2022-23: Massive Increase in Levy on Mobile Phone Imports
Telecom Imports Register 53.84 percent Negative Growth
The overall telecom imports remained $169.438 million during the first two months of the current fiscal year 2022-2023, hence, registering a 53.84 percent negative growth as compared to $367.051 million during the same period of last fiscal year. However, on a month-on-month (MoM) basis the overall telecom imports in the country registered 49.54 percent growth in August as compared to $67.901 million during July. Meanwhile, on a YoY basis, the overall telecom imports registered a negative growth of 51.31 percent and stood at $101.537 when compared to $208.558 million in August 2021-22.
