TEHRAN, April 23 (Xinhua) -- The Iranian government's revenue from customs duty and imports tax levied on cellphones showed a sharp rise over the past year ending in March 2018, official statistics revealed on Monday.

During the previous year ending in March 2017, the value of the government's revenue from the imported handsets was 21.4 million U.S. dollars.

The figure increased to 58.3 million U.S. dollars in the following year, a 172 percent jump year on year.

As a part of President Hassan Rouhani administration's push to curb mobile phone's smuggling, the Cellphone Registry Scheme went into full swing as of April 21.

The Iranian adminstration introduced the registry scheme which bars local operators from offering services to contraband phones.

The scheme renders brands such as Samsung, HTC, ASUS and ZTE legally liable.

After the implementation, smuggled phones were cut off from the country's network. Statistics show that so far, a total of 210,773 phones have been disconnected.

The most impacted brand has been Apple, with 108,588 iPhones being blacklisted. Nokia and Huawei are next with 43,944 and 25,794 cutoffs, according to the report. Enditem

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