Who Owns Pakistan - Yimg

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