Competitive home appliance industry of Pakistan.

• Author: Fazl-E-Haider, Syed
• Position: Industry overview

Byline: Syed Fazl-E-Haider

Pakistan's electronic and home appliances industry witnessed a rapid growth over the last one decade. Its consistent growth attracted both the local and foreign investors. The country witnessed a significant rise in production of electronic appliances such as smart phones, cooling equipment, electric motors, TVs, watches, and electronic security systems over the past few years. The home appliances sector occupies over 95 percent of the domestic market with a large pool of low cost human resource.

The sector has already acquired a number of basic technologies. The home appliances industry in Pakistan is clearly divided into the organized sector and the unorganized sector. The unorganized sector is much larger than the organized sector.

The experts believe the country's home appliances sector has sufficient managerial capacity to handle export business. Afghanistan, UAE, Sri Lanka and Iraq are the existing exporting markets of the Pakistani home appliances products. There is enough potential for Pakistani products to expand further in the Middle Eastern markets, while South Asia and Africa could become new markets.

Rise in the demand for the electronics and home appliances is attributed to the improvement in electricity supplies alongside an extended summer season. However, the rising fuel prices and soaring inflation has significantly eroded the purchasing power of people who feel harder to feed, clothe and house their families. High inflation and high interest rates raise concerns and pose challenges to the growth of this industry in the coming years.

This June, TCL, the world's No. 2 LED TV brand, announced it is entering into the home appliance market with the launch of their air conditioners in Pakistan. TCL is one of the leading players in the global consumer electronics industry with a global presence in over 150 countries. TCL has emerged as one of the top three leading LED TV brands in Pakistan in 2018 with a particular focus in High-End 4K UHD and Big Size TVs, in which it has a significant market share. Last year, TCL had announced its plans to extend its operations in the Pakistani electronic market.

Haier Pakistan is the first and only plant to manufacture fully automatic washing machines in the South Asian country. Haier washing machines also depicted good market growth mainly due to consumer conversion towards fully automatic machines.

Last year, Euromonitor, the world's most authoritative market...