In a strategic move to bolster Pakistan’s burgeoning mobile manufacturing sector, the government has announced a 3% research and development (R&D) incentive aimed at escalating the production of high-end phones. Minister for Information Technology, Dr. Umar Saif, took to social media to unveil this impetus, signaling the country’s ambition to become a key player in the global market for mobile handsets.
The initiative, set to make Pakistani-manufactured phones more cost-competitive internationally, doesn’t stop there. The government plans to further incentivize the industry with a prospective increase in the R&D reward to 8%, aligning with regional policies. Additionally, a tariff-differential policy is in the pipeline to undercut the prices of imported phones, enhancing the appeal of locally crafted devices.
Pakistan is the 7th largest market of cellular users in the world with 191 Million cellular connections.
However, we import most of our mobile phones. We need to manufacture them locally and develop an industry to export made-in-Pakistan phones.
Today in our first Mobile… pic.twitter.com/ZCQDRK4yjo
— Umar Saif (@umarsaif) January 29, 2024
Pakistan’s mobile market, ranked as the world’s seventh-largest with a staggering 191 million cellular connections, presents a massive opportunity for economic growth and innovation. Yet, the reliance on imported mobile handsets has been a bottleneck for economic potential, as Dr. Saif highlighted. The minister’s vision is clear: nurturing a robust domestic manufacturing base capable of not only satisfying the internal demand—which stands at an estimated 25 million phones per year—but also catapulting Pakistan into a billion-dollar export industry.
This vision is further evidenced by the industry’s impressive growth trajectory, with 57 million smartphones manufactured to date. Local manufacturers are scaling up, nearly doubling their output from 16 million handsets in 2021 to about 24 million in 2022. The capacity to meet—and exceed—domestic demand positions Pakistan as a rising hub for mobile handset production, with the government’s supportive measures promising to drive export competitiveness.
The minister also hinted at future schemes to facilitate cellphone purchases, including installment-based financing options, making technology more accessible to the wider populace.
These progressive steps by the Ministry of IT and Telecom underscore a robust commitment to achieving key targets in the IT sector and augmenting Pakistan’s exports. The handset manufacturing industry’s upward momentum is a testament to the government’s focused efforts and the increasing competence of local manufacturers to cater to both domestic and international markets.
#PakistanITSector #MobileManufacturing #HandsetManufacturing #Exports #DrUmarSaif
