Pakistan has decided to domestically manufacture cellphone and smartphones as mobile phones penetration stands at around 75 per cent in Pakistan.
With a population growth getting close to 200 million in Pakistan itself, there was a huge big market for these new, hand held sets, Khaleej Times reported.
Demands of handy cell phones and smart phones was equally strong both in the urban as well as rural areas, like far away Gilgit-Baltistan on the Chinese border in the north and Chaman in the south, bordering Iran.
According to report, Rs 800 billion to Rs 1 trillion telecom revenue was estimated in the near future.
“Foreign investors, who are seeking investment in the telecom sector are likely to get big incentives,” Ministry of Finance sources said.
They include prospective investors, particularly from UAE, Saudi Arabia, and ASEAN. Some of these investors propose to join hands with Chinese companies which have reputed and cost-effective technology and trained manpower.
Their pans were to make Pakistan as the production base to feed the Pakistan-Central Asia-Iran, and Middle Eastern and African markets for telecom and cellular products.
Beside China, which was a big suppler of mobile phones through official-channels imports and trade, thousand more of the mobs, smart phones, and the rest of these telecom products are smuggled duty-free into Pakistan every week.
Talking to Khaleej Times, Minister of State Mrs Anusha Rehman said that the decision has been made by the Ministry of IT and Telecom.
“As soon as our domestic manufacturing starts, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government would fulfill one more promise to provide cheaper products to people, expand local manufacturing and ensure more jobs to Pakistanis,” she also said.
The report told that immediate steps will be to float Expression of Interest (EoIs) for local manufacturing of mobile phones and smart meters under the revival and revitalisation plans of Telephone Industry of Pakistan (TIP) the factory built by Seimens of Germany.
It was the first factory which started making telephone apparatus and later on full fledged telephone exchanges and telecom equipment at Haripur in Khyber Pukhtunistan Province in 1950s. It is called of Mother of All Telecom products.
Quoting IT and Telecom secretary Azmat Ali Ranjha the report said that after the recent launch of $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) prospects of Chinese investment in Seimens have brightened and it may run in public-private partnership mode.
Shipments of smartphones in Pakistan massively surged by 214 per cent on year-on-year basis during the first three moths of 2015 compared to the last year, said the just unveiled report of the International Data Corporation (IDC).
“The shifting dynamics of the Pakistan mobile market to the deployment of 3G/4G networks across the country and the subsequent rise in the demand of devices that are compatible with the infrastructure,” according to the report.
The entire telecom sector revenue totaled Rs300 billion in the first half July-December of financial year 2015, it said.
Dr Ismail Shah, chairman of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) said with the use of 3G /4G services since last year 900,000 to 1.2 million people are being employed in the IT sector.
This scale of growth, and with prospective cellular and IT investment by foreign and domestic investors will provide a huge growth and big profits. (APP)
