Islamabad October 12 2022: The National Assembly of Pakistan, the lower house of the country, was told on Wednesday that under Mobile Device Manufacturing Policy, 30 mobile manufacturers had been issued licenses to start local production of mobile devices by setting up local facilities.
Parliamentary Secretary for Industries and Production Shahida Akhtar Ali told the House that a mobile device manufacturing policy had been made to encourage local production and counter the security threat. The mobile phone manufacturing policy will ensure localization and indigenization of parts of mobile phones, she added.
With the successful execution of DIRBS, the local assembly industry has evolved from infancy to well growing stage, with significant growth seen in local assembly of smart phones. In 2019, only 119,639 smartphones were assembled locally whereas in 2021, the number of such devices grew to 10.06 million, according to PTA. It is important to highlight that at the end of the second month of 2022, 6.76 million smartphones have so far been assembled in Pakistan.
The country imported USD 1,978 million worth of mobile phones in fiscal year 2022, which runs from July to June, which was 4.19 percent lower when compared with imports of USD 2,065 million in fiscal year 2021, according to data published by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. During the fist two months of this fiscal year, imports of mobile phones were down 64.38 percent to USD 101 million. However, significant decline in mobile imports is due to restriction on imports of mobile phones by government of Pakistan to control forex flows.
Pakistan has the distinction of implementing the world’s first open-source, full-fledged DIRBS. This system has the ability to identify all IMEIs latched on Pakistan’s mobile networks and to categorize them based on their compliant status.
Responding to a question regarding the rehabilitation of Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM), she said that the government was making continuous efforts for the rehabilitation of PSM.
She said that to review PSM, the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the cabinet in its meeting on 3rd May 2019, passed directions to place PSM on the privatization list and directed the Privatization Commission (PC) for appointment of Transaction Advisory Consortium (TAC) for the revival of PSM through advice to the government on a set of appropriate privatization modes and as per law.
The Financial Advisor (FA) bank of China international Consortium was shortlisted by the privatization commission, she said and added that the FA had carried out due diligence in consultation with the PC to find out the best possible option/mode for the revival of PSM.
The Parliamentary Secretary said that after deliberation, FA had proposed a transaction structure model suggesting transferring Identified Core operating Assets into a wholly owned subsidiary of PSMC through a scheme of arrangement.
To formalize the proposal, PC moved a summary for the approval of the proposed transaction structure she said adding the Cabinet Committee on Privatization (CCoP) has approved the creation of a new subsidiary/company as part of the transaction model in which assets of PSM shall be transferred.
