Who Owns Pakistan - Yimg

disprove that bulk of the banking and isurance business was controlled by the 22
families. A supplement on insurance business in daily Dawn of February 19,
1971 said that " the advocate of insurance's nationalization believe that
insurance is in hands of the 22 families and it was not true". Nothing could have
been farther from the truth than this statement, because even today, in 1998, the
general insurance business which was not nationalized is in the hands of the 22
families.
It was to pacify growing social unrest and resentment against the big business
that General Yahya Khan promulgated the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade
Practices, Control and Prevention Ordinance, February 1971, providing for the
setting up of Monopoly Control Authority to " take measures against undue
concentration of economic power and restrictive trade practices". This was a
comprehensive law, clearly spelling out the situation which shall be deemed to
constitute under concentration of economic power, monopoly power and
unreasonable trade practices.
The explanatory note with the ordinance defined the monopoly situations stating
specifically that " creation or maintenance of unreasonable monopoly power in
any market has been prohibited". Market was defined to " mean the geographical
region i which competition in the production or sale of such goods or provision of
services take place.
The law empowered the Monopoly Control Authority to ask the management of a
private limited company to go public if its assets exceeded Rs 50 million.
Similarly all such dealings were prohibited with an associated undertaking which
benefited or were likely to benefit the shareholders of such undertakings, to the
prejudice of another associated undertaking.
Acquisition by one person or undertaking, of the stocks or assets of any other
person where the effects are likely creation of a monopoly power were prohibited.
The law also prohibited financial institutions and insurance companies from
making loans to firms associated with them on terms more favorable to than
those to unrelated firms. The law hit at the various methods which have been
instrumental in the accumulation of capital in few hands. Ironically the key
provisions of this ordinance remained unenforced except during 1972-77, with
the result that caretaker govt of Moeen Qureshi in 1993 had to reincorporate
some of its provisions in another ordinance. This ordinance was also allowed
to lapse.
Bhutto's Nationalization
You can bring the rich to the level of poor overnight but it takes a
lifetime to lift the poor to the level of the rich
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