The imposition of 100 pc cash margin requirement has seemingly impacted mobile phones import. Mobile phone imports declined 14.6pc on a month-on-month basis to $60.02m in Feb 2017 from $70.17m in January 2017 as per the data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).
It is pertinent to mention here that State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on February 24, 2017, had imposed 100 percent cash margin requirement to curb import of non-essential items.
The overall import of mobile phones declined 7.61 pc to $459.37m during July – February 2016/2017 in comparison to $497.2m in the corresponding period of the last fiscal year.
