Mobile Manufacturing Policy formulated Engineering Post Report 

The incumbent federal government has formulated the Mobile Device Manufacturing Policy for encouraging  local production  as well as countering security threats.

The policy will ensure localization and indigenization of parts of mobile phones.

As many as 30  mobile manufacturers  have been issued licenses for setting up local facilities and starting production of mobile devices in the country.

Federal Ministry of Industries and Production and  Engineering Development (EBD) have taken a number of steps for establishing  new industries for meeting the local demand and increasing  production of export quality goods.

Two key policies  in order to spur local manufacturing that have recently been launched   include the Mobile Device Manufacturing Policy and  Auto Industry  Development and Export Policy (2021-26).

Under  Auto Industry Development and Export Policy,  a number of manufacturers have begun manufacturing/ assembling  new brands of vehicles.

The sources said that Greenfield Technology was another initiative  taken for both  import substitution and export enhancement.  Under this scheme, different incentives  in terms of  taxes and duties  have been given  to the companies  by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR)  besides  bringing new  technologies  for introducing  innovative product design and reducing  production costs.

Local manufacturing plants had manufactured/assembled 0.67 million  mobile phones in August 2022.  The manufactured/ assembled  mobile phones hadsets by the local manufacturing plants  during calendar year 2021 stood at 24.66 million  compared too 13.05  million in 2020 indicating an appreciable increase of 88 per cent.

On other hand, the commercial imports of mobile phone handsets stood at 10.26 million in 2021 compared to 24.51 in 2020 ., as per the official data of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).