Who Owns Pakistan - Yimg

for several days, Ahmad Dawood agreed to take over Karnaphuli Paper Mills and
it was affiliated with Dawood group of Industries. A reorganization and
modernization of the project was launched, cordial relations were hammered out
with workers and within a short time, Karnaphuli Paper Project was on the way to
become a profitable organization.
While PIDC was divesting industrial projects set up with tax-payers money and
govt-contracted loans, to big industrial groups, its sister organization, Pakistan
Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation (PICIC) was dishing out loans to the
same people to launch new indutries.
PICIC's board of director included 13 members from the private sector and seven
of them belonged to the leading families including Dawood, Adamjee, Bashir,
Fancy, Jalil, Rangoonwala and Valika. It was headed by A W Adamjee with
Ahmad Dawood as vice chairman. Heavily representated on the board of PICIC,
these families made sure that loans sanctioned by the corporation rotated within
same people. The dominance of the industrial families on PICIC board continues
to-date.
Dr Mahboob ul Haq, then Chief Economist in the Planning Commission revealed
in his famous study that 22 families were controlling 80 % of banking and 70%of
insurance assets in Pakistan. According to Lawrence White, 43 families received
51 % of all industrial licenses issued by govt of Pakistan during second plan
period and 64 % of all industrial credit sanctioned by PICIC. Rashid Ahmad is
quoted by Saeed Shafqat to have noted that " 70% of loans sanctioned by PICIC
went only to 11 industrial houses" and that five houses controlled 80% of the Jute
industry and 50 percent of cotton textile production in Pakistan.
The divestment of PIDC, control of the 22 families on the banking assets, their
ability to monopolize the loans sanctioned by PICIC played an important role in
the concentration of wealth in few hands but it would be naive to ascribe the
growth of the 22 families, simply to corruption or their collusion with politicians
and bureaucrats because these empires were founded by rugged, srtong-willed
single-directional people, obsessed by the smell of big money.
The Founding Fathers
Latif Bawany was the founder of Bawany group and according to a company
review in daily, The Business Recorder, Karachi started his business in Rangoon
whose streets he roamed on bicycle to sell cloth pieces. Haroons are reported to
have made their initial fortune by selling second hand clothes in pre-partition
India. Several interviewees familiar with the Haroon family believed that they still
have a share in the second hand clothing trade in Pakistan.
Mohammad Ismaeel, founder of the Colony group started as a helper (Munshi) in
a Soda Wate factory set up by the Maratib Ali family in Ferozepur but rose to be
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