Pakistan Customs clears up mobile phone import facts after wrong news.
BY Mahnoor | 22-07-2026
Pakistan Customs gave a statement about news reports on mobile phone import numbers. They said the reports are wrong because they counted all imported mobile phones as finished phones, without separating phones that are put together in Pakistan from those brought in ready to sell.
In a public notice, customs said Pakistan imported about 32 million mobile phones in the 2025–26 financial year, compared to about 33 million in 2024–25. This shows total import numbers stayed almost the same.
Pakistan Customs says the total value of mobile phone imports went up to about Rs.520 billion in 2025–26 from Rs.427 billion a year before.
But customs said almost four-fifths of that amount, around Rs.420 billion, was Completely Knocked Down (CKD) and Semi Knocked Down (SKD) kits imported by registered manufacturers for local assembly.
Only about Rs.100 billion, less than one-fifth of total import value, are fully built phones imported as finished products. Customs said that treating all Rs.520 billion as finished-phone imports gave a wrong idea of Pakistan’s dependence on imported phones.
Customs data also showed that within fully built imports, smartphones increased from about 0.29 million units in the 2024-25 financial year to about 1.04 million units in the 2025-26 financial year.
Feedback from the industry shows that almost 60-70% of this growth came from new and used Apple iPhones and Google Pixel phones.
Since both brands are not made in the country, the increase in their legal imports shows real demand from customers for products that cannot be made locally. This is not harming local manufacturing or changing Pakistan’s policy of assembling phones locally.
More people are now choosing to buy officially imported phones because it costs less.
Pakistan Customs says that an iPhone bought through official commercial channels costs about 150,000 rupees in duties and taxes. In comparison, a phone registered with a passport costs around 190,000 rupees, and one registered with a CNIC costs nearly 210,000 rupees.
According to customs, the total duties and taxes collected on mobile phone imports went up to about Rs. 121 billion in the 2025-26 financial year, from about Rs. 89 billion in the 2024-25 financial year. This is an increase of more than 36 percent, which is faster than the growth in the value of imports.
The authority also said that duty collection on imported fully assembled smartphones more than doubled compared to the previous year. This shows a shift from illegal imports to legal, tax-paid imports.
Pakistan Customs said that because they stopped smuggling and wrong declarations, made customs clearance easier, and worked more closely with the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) on registering devices, more phones are now imported legally.
This has led to more government money, clearer mobile phone trade, and support for Pakistan’s own phone assembly industry, which gets most of the imported phones.
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