ISLAMABAD: After the first successful consignment of ‘Make in Pakistan’ 4G smartphones to the United Arab Emirates this month, the government on Friday fixed mobile phone export target at $1 billion for the current fiscal year linked with the incentives offered to local manufacturers.

This ambitious projection was made after the latest figures showed that local manufacturing of mobile phones surpassed the quantities imported during January-July period of this year. The manufacturers produced 12.27 million mobile phones while importers brought in 8.29m units during 7MCY21.

While discussing the export opp­or­t­unities with members of Pakistan Mobile Phone Manufacturers Association (PMPMA) and representatives of other leading makers and assemblers including Samsung, Oppo, Vivo, Tecno, Infinix and Inovi, Commerce Adviser Abdul Razak Dawood observed that it was very encouraging to see imports were going down as mobile phones were being manufactured locally. “It’s also creating job opportunities for the locals and saving millions of dollars.” he added.

“I was also informed that small quantities of mobiles have now started to be exported,” the adviser told the meeting. This is a testimony that our mobile phone manufacturing policy is on track, he claimed.

Need for an integrated approach stressed to achieve the goal

He reiterated the importance given by the government to the “Make in Pakistan” led economic growth. In order to achieve this end not only the tariff structure has been rationalised by creating a tariff differential between completely Built-Up Unit (CBU) and Completely Knocked Down (CKD) and Semi Knocked Down (SKD) kits.

The participants of the meeting acknowledged the incentives given by the government to the local mobile manufacturers and assemblers of mobile phones.

They informed the commerce adviser that there was a need to adopt an integrated approach to become a mobile handsets exporting country.

They stressed that a long-term coordination was needed between the commerce ministry, the Ministry of Industries and Production and the Ministry of Information Technology to ensure that Pakistan become a handset exporting country.

“We cannot be branded an exporting country with one or two consignments,” said Zeeshan Mianoor, Chief Executive Inovi Telecom, the company that achieved the first export order of Pakistan.

He said that to remain a sustainable exporter the government has to formulate and implement conducive policies, while the manufacturers needed not only to cut cost of production but also achieve up to 40 per cent localisation.

The minister was informed that the current wastage ratio in China was less than 0.5pc whereas it was slightly higher than 2pc in Pakistan.

“Besides we all need to focus on local production of non-technical parts like cables, protectors, covers, other essential accessories etc - and these account to around 40 percent of the set,” Mr Mianoor said.

It has been decided that the manufacturers will present their recommendations to the commerce adviser in coming days, and a joint meeting will be held to promote localisation of mobile set parts.

Mr Razak was informed that the strength of Pakistani manufacturers was that the majority of the units were based on Chinese sets and in a joint venture with the Chinese companies.

The top end world market is held by US companies followed by the Korean brands, but the mass scale has been captured by the Chinese producers.

“Pakistan is a mid and low end market and those who would buy Pakistani assembled mobile sets too belong to this class otherwise they would buy top end phones directly made in the USA or Korea,” Techno CEO Amir Allahawala told Dawn.

“But the key challenge in mobile manufacturing was that mobile set model have a limited life, “ he added.

Published in Dawn, August 28th, 2021