Business Desk :
A dozen of factories are scaling up handset assembly operations in Bangladesh to meet the full demand of the country within this year.
People involved with the mobile phone sector say Bangladesh will no longer need to import handsets the sector will be able to fully meet the local demand this year. Local manufacturers can supply almost 80 per cent of the feature phones at this moment. The production of mobile phone handsets in Bangladesh has caused the grey market of illegal and fake mobile to shrink, reports bdnews24.com.
As many as 33 million mobile handsets were made in Bangladesh over the past one and a half years, including 18.8 million in last six months, said Shyam Sunder Sikder, the chairman of Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC).
Bangladesh imported 16.3 million mobiles in the last one and a half years with only 1.8 million of them imported in the last six months.
Before domestic production began in 2017, Bangladesh needed to meet the local consumption through 100 per cent import of handsets. Now the plants import small parts and assemble the handsets.
The handset market in Bangladesh is worth over Tk 100 billion or roughly $1.2 billion.
One has to pay more than 60 per cent tax in total to import a handset. On the other hand, the government has exempted the local manufacturers from paying value-added tax or VAT while the plants assembling the handsets need to pay only 5 per cent VAT.
According to the BTRC, at least 12 companies have the licence to make mobile handsets.
The annual demand in Bangladesh is more than 35 million handsets, including 11 million smartphones made or assembled locally, according to Zakaria Shahid, the general secretary of Bangladesh Mobile Phone Importers Association. Over 60 per cent of the feature phones are made or assembled in Bangladesh, according to Zakaria. He hopes the plants will be able to meet the demand fully in a short time.
