Who Owns Pakistan - Yimg

According to Lawrence White, top seven of 13 banks nationalized in 1974
accounted for 60% of bank deposits but if foreign and govt banks were excluded
then their share came to 90% of the total. Four of the top seven banks were
owned by 22 families. These were Habib Bank (Habib), United Bank (Saigols),
Australasia Bank (Colony) and Premier Bank (Arag).
Z A Bhutto made a serious effort to level off the credit facilities over as big a
segment of population as possible by creating Credit Consultative Committee
which apportioned credit to business and industry, directing it inot areas where
would be shy because of commercial reasons, and by opening of new bank
branches in the rural areas.
However his efforts were handicapped by the absence of a regulatory framework
over the bankers who had been rendered free from the clutches os the Seth but
had new masters to serve, the financial bureaucrats and PPP henchmen. In the
post-nationalizaton era, bankers were hand-picked by the powers that be, to
head the banks, on the basis of their supinelessness rather than merit. They
served themselves and their masters well. OVer the years, nationalized
commercial banks became the fishing ponds for civil and military bureaucrats,
corrupt politicians and their courtier businessmen. Only Pakistan's economy was
victim.
The Alarm Bells
As early as 1959, Credit Inquiry Commission set up by the State Bank urged the
govt to address the problem of " concentration of banking facilities in a limited
number of important business and financial centres, neglect of less developed
areas of country like East Pakistan and concentration of bank credits in the
hands of small number of borrowers with large size of sums against their needs".
The report was shelved in some bureaucratic drawer of the State Bank of
Pakistan to gather dust and business went on as usual.
Ten years later when the participants of a seminar on Field Marshal Ayub Khan's
Decade of Development pointed out that " much water has flown down the Indus
and Padma Rivers" and no step has been taken to correct the monopolistic
situation, Khalid Wahid, President, PFCCI responded arrogantly by saying "
the fact that we have highly developed banking system does not mean that
we should submit it the stress of small loans". He suggested that for small
borrowers specialized agencies should be created.
Thus, all the warnings fell of deaf ears and out of the golden decade sprung the
phantom of Pakistan Peoples Party which declared massive nationalization as
the linchpin of its manifesto.
We have already to the article by Dr Nawab Haider Naqvi, the head of Pakistan
Institute of Development Economics (PIDE) in which he forcefully argued against
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