Who Owns Pakistan - Yimg
Who Owns Pakistan - Yimg
Who Owns Pakistan - Yimg
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
4 billion and a roaster of impressive clients. Descon has won contracts in Abu<br />
Dhabi, Saudi Arabia and Iraq and is perhaps the biggest <strong>Pakistan</strong>i company<br />
abroad employing over 1,000 people.<br />
Razak is a scion of Dawood family which was ranked first among the 22 families<br />
in 1970. In the wake of Bhutto's nationalization Ahmad Dawood and Sadiq<br />
Dawood left <strong>Pakistan</strong> and established their business in USA and Canada<br />
respectively. The family split in 1981 into what is now known as the Dawood,<br />
BRR, Descon groups of three Dawood brothers and a relatively unknown Ghani<br />
group based on the share of in-laws of Ahmad Dawood. Razak's father Suleman<br />
Dawood inherited Transpack and United Refrigration and Razak, a mining<br />
engineer from Newcastle University, UK decided to make Lahore his home and<br />
concentrate on developing Descon Engineering, then a small family business<br />
launched in 1978. During last ten years, Descon has completed jobs at some of<br />
the biggest projects in <strong>Pakistan</strong> like Hubco, ICI, PTA Plant, Fauji-Jordan Fertilizer<br />
and AES Lalpir Power Plant.<br />
Razak believes that big business failed to face the challenge of anti-business<br />
policies of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto by running away from <strong>Pakistan</strong> and ultimately<br />
resorting to division of assets and splits. " Normally when there are external<br />
problems, families get united. Here they did not . They just went away", he said in<br />
an interview with the author.<br />
He thinks that <strong>Pakistan</strong> is rapidly becoming a nation of traders since nobody<br />
wanted to play for long-term in <strong>Pakistan</strong>. " Politicians want short cut to power,<br />
industrialists want short cut to money and bureaucrats want short cut to top. The<br />
govt. policies are revenue-oriented rather than development-oriented. When<br />
everybody is playing for the short term, how can you have long-term investment<br />
projects?", he asked.<br />
In September 1994 when Benazir Bhutto govt constitueted a Committee for the<br />
Engineering goods Industry, Razak was a member of the committee and was<br />
asked to prepare an inventory of both the short and long term problems of the<br />
engineering industry. More recently he has been appointed a member of the<br />
Engineering Development Board, by Nawaz Sharif govt.<br />
At the round-table conference in Lahore in September 1994 presided by U.S<br />
Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary, Razak spoke about the need to provide<br />
protection to the engineering industry and particularly referred to a deletion<br />
programme for power plants that had been in place for several years and for<br />
which large capacity was set up in the public and private sector. He was snubbed<br />
by O'Leary who said without mincing words that in the event <strong>Pakistan</strong> insisted for<br />
deletion the American investors will go elsewhere.<br />
71