Who Owns Pakistan - Yimg

" It was like gold rush of United States", G M Adamjee observed in an interview
with the daily Dawn in 1995 while talking about the opportunities created by the
creation of Pakistan, as an independent state on the world map.
Majority of 22 the families of the 1970's Pakistan, started as traders and
exporters and only 17 of 100 people at the top in industry interviewed by Gustav
Papanek in the 1960 reported to have experience in indutry prior to 1947. First
and Second five years Plans also noted that it were people in the trading who
had surplus capital and, therefore, they should diversify in manufacturing and
industry. The Korean boom of the early 1950's helped these traders in reaping
fortunes and enter manufacturing.
Signals about a massive concentration of wealth started emitting from the
economy as early as 1959, when a Credit Inquiry Committee of State Bank of
Pakistan, revealed that 222 depositors were making use of 2/3rd of the total
credit facilities offered by the banking system. It was around this time that
Papanek in his first study established that of the nearly 3,000 individual firms
in the country, 24 individuals, firms and companies controlled nearly half of
the industrial assets.
But the question of monopolies exploded wth full force when in his famous
speech, Dr Mahboob ul Haq, Chief Economists, Planning Commission, told a
meeting in Karachi that economy of Pakistan had come to be dominated by 22
families who owned 66% of the total industrial assets, 70% of insurance and 80%
of banking. His list of the top seven included Saigols, Habib, Dawood, Colony,
Adamjee, Crescent and Valika.
Prof Lawrence White who, at that time was working at the USAID office in
Pakistan, measured the concentration of wealth on the basis of firms listed on
Karachi Stock Exchange and found that 43 families or groups controlled 98% of
197 non-financial companies, accounting for 53% of the total assets. According
to White, the top four (Saigols, Dawood, Adamjee and Amin) controlled 20% of
total assets, the top ten families controlled one third of the total while the top 30
owned over half of the listed assets.
The concentration of wealth and iniquitous regional development was to
become the breeding ground for separatists of East Pakistan and Bhutto's
nationalization.
The Saga of 1970s
The seperation of East Pakistan, followed by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's nationalization,
broke the back of many among the 22 families, wiping out some of them
completely from the corporate map of Pakistan. Sixteen major houses lost
heavily in East Pakistan, with Dawood, Adamjee, Isphani, Abass Khaleeli,
Bawany and Amin being the major victims.
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