The tale of two banks

we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period,” excerpt from Charles Dickens’ “The Tale of Two Cities” published in 1859. The year was 1997 and the young firebrand Khawaja Mohammad Asif had been appointed chairman of the Privatisation Commission during the PML-N government, and the IMF was breathing down our neck and banking was the then Achilles heel. Government-owned banks had over 80% market share of the total loans in the early 1990s, while the private sector had the remainder. We had been hearing horror tales about the mismanagement, corruption and bad debt portfolios. In short, we could have been assumed dead and buried! The following examples will explain the scenario: