Who Owns Pakistan - Yimg
Who Owns Pakistan - Yimg
Who Owns Pakistan - Yimg
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lessing in disguise for the Chiniotis who had been hitherto disadvantaged for<br />
lack of access to banking and other facilities.<br />
In 1997, Chiniotis had 14 places among the top 45 groups controlling at least 110<br />
companies at the KSE. There are several other Chinioti groups like Mahboob<br />
Elahi, Diamond, Guard, Kaisar group of Kaisar A Sheikh, MNA, Kaisar Apparel<br />
group and JKB which are known to be immensely rich but have little or no<br />
presence at the stock exchange and therefore, it was not possible to rank them.<br />
While other business communities resorted to flight of capital, Chiniotis made<br />
progress after 1970 because the flight of Memons and other Karachi-based<br />
groups created a vavums that they were than willing to fill.<br />
" Nationalization affected different business groups differently and in different<br />
degrees of severity ", recalled Farooq A Sheikh of Colony, the major Chinioti<br />
group to suffer in nationalization. He argued that insecurity had become the part<br />
of the Memon community's psyche because they had suffered greatly in partition<br />
and have failed to be anchored in the troubled waters of local politics, while<br />
Chiniotis benfited immediately, psychologically and otherwise since partition<br />
created an enviroment conducive to their return to native land.<br />
The PPP manifesto had envisaged nationalization of big textile units and<br />
therefore the people who had already set up textile units between 1947-71<br />
stopped further investment. This created a vacuum. A surge in the domestic and<br />
international demand for textile coincided with an era of import liberalization<br />
coupled with high tariff, ensuring lucrative returns, with the result that Chinioti<br />
who had very few textile mills up to that time but plenty of money entered the<br />
textile business. Almost all the Punjab-based groups of post-Bhutto era like<br />
Saphire-Gulistan, United, Tata, Fazalsons, Fatima and Sargodha have their roots<br />
in the textile units set up during Zulfikar Ali Bhutto govt or immediately after him.<br />
Thus nationalization became a God sent opportunity for Chiniotis who were sons<br />
of the soil, had not been hurt in East <strong>Pakistan</strong> and had the skills to step into the<br />
shoes that had fitted only Memons in post-independence <strong>Pakistan</strong>.<br />
Nawaz Sharif and Chiniotis<br />
Few months before Nawaz Sharif came into power in 1990, an article in the<br />
monthly, Herald about the 22 families ranked Habib to be number 1, followed by<br />
Crescent at 2, Dawood at 3 and Saigols at four. The monthly Herald's list of top<br />
25 families included 9 Punjab based groups of which six were Chiniotis. However<br />
three years rule of Nawaz Sharif was to radically transform this balance of<br />
economic power between Karachi and Punjab.<br />
Punjab and Chiniotis generally and Mian Mohammad Mansha and his associates<br />
particularly proposed during the chief minister-ship of Nawaz Sharif. Pasrur<br />
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