Who Owns Pakistan - Yimg

Since most of my work as an economic reporter was limited to covering the
government policies in Islamabad, my knowledge of the corporate sector and big
business was rudimentary. My first job, thus, was to identify companies by
groups. It took two years to identify the major groups and their companies. I
found out that several of the proverbial rich groups were not rich anymore and
had moved abroad, became extinct or grown small through divisions and
subdivisions.
Bitten by Bhutto's nationalization and furor over the concentration of wealth, the
proverbial 22 families started covering their tracks in the 1970's, arranging their
eggs in different baskets, digging-in, dispersing and making it difficult to identify
them. However, if there is a will there is a way.
I read thousands of corporate reports of companies listed on Karachi Stock
Exchange and company reviews in newspapers. Courtasey Shaikh Ikram ul haq
of the Daily, Buisiness Recorder of Karachi, I scanned the newspaper files for the
last ten years. I had hardly started arranging the book in my mind when Nawaz
Sharif started on the collision course with Presidant Ishaq. Sands of time started
running out for his government.
Nawaz Sharif's exit from power came in August 1993 and, unfortunately, for my
book. By the time I had not yet started writing the book. It was only in January
1994 that I sat down at my computer and slugged my first chapter, under the file
BBR (Bismallah Al Rehman Arahim), an abbreviation borrowed from BBR,
Modaraba of the Dawood group. I sat out to identify and rank the super rich in
Pakistan, trace their origin, chart their growth and find out how at least some of
them became overly riched overnight. But book in the reader's hands is not
simply about the wealth of the 22 families or their indictment for accumulating it
dubiously.
Z A Bhutto demolished monopolies and Nawaz Sharif attempted to reincarnate
them. And although what each professed and did was the need of the hour, both
became the victims of haste. One nationalized and the other privatised.
Nationalisation retarded Pakistan's growth in many ways but its worst
consequence was the scars inflicted on the psyche of the big business,
evergreen even two decades after the nationalization. It alienated the
industarialilst from the economic mainstream and, as if by a collective decision,
several of the original 22 families who poineered development in Pakistan
switched off investment in long gestation projects. The Pakistani businessmen
who were planing mega projects in 1971 and are still capable of setting up mega
projects resigned to remain spinners, sugar manufacturers or best at best
cement manufacturers. The reservation on the part of the people who had the
surplus capital and the know-how to lead the country to a take-off stage
remained to date the single biggest factor holding up the flowering of country's
full economic potential.
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