Abdul Razak Dawood, the Prime Minister’s Adviser on Commerce and Investment, said on Wednesday that Pakistan was aiming to increase exports after achieving “great success” in mobile phone manufacturing last year.
Pakistan, which was formerly a net importer of mobile phones, produced 22.12 million handsets from January to November 2021 and imported 9.95 million, according to figures by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).
In 2020, Pakistan’s import of mobile phones was 24.51 million compared to 13.05 million sets produced locally.
Various Chinese mobile phone manufacturers have played a key role in Pakistan’s production boom in 2021, according to the PTA.
Local manufacturing plants assembled 9.03 million smartphones while the number of 2G mobile phones was 13.09 million.
“I would say that our whole venture into manufacturing mobile phones has been a big success,” Dawood said in an interview with Arab News on Wednesday.
“It has been very successful because we now see that every month the number of mobile phones coming into the country is decreasing and the numbers that are being produced and sold locally is increasing.”
According to the PM’s adviser, the record levels of local manufacturing were reached as a result of the present government’s new “conducive policy.”
