Dawn columnist points to risks in Pakistan's financial oversight
Pakistan's financial oversight system may fail to give investors sufficient confidence in the safety of their investments due to problems with oversight of companies and banks. This assessment was expressed by economic columnist Khurram Husain in a column for Dawn. As one example, he cited the situation surrounding listed company Unity Foods, which has come under the attention of Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency.
According to the author, Unity Foods, which operates in the edible oils and rice sector, is accused of discrepancies of more than 44 billion Pakistani rupees between its published financial statements and internal records. Husain writes that the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan suspected problems as early as 2019, but its attempts to investigate faced legal obstacles. The collection of materials for possible criminal charges, he says, lasted nearly six years.
Wilmar International's losses
The largest shareholder in Unity Foods was Singapore's Wilmar International. The company previously reported that it had recognized a $150 million loss due to its investment in Pakistan. Wilmar said that the audited accounts provided to it by Unity Foods' management indicated that the company was profitable and had substantial tangible assets.
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In 2025, Unity Foods began experiencing difficulties servicing its bank debt, after which the board of directors raised questions about the situation at the company. Its founder and chief executive stepped down in December 2025, and the chief financial officer did so in January. Wilmar said it subsequently discovered inconsistencies in financial figures and working capital data, which ultimately led to the registration of an FIR several days ago.
Borrowing from one bank
Separately, Husain drew attention to an unnamed bank which, he claims, increased its short-term borrowing from the State Bank of Pakistan through the open market operations mechanism. The volume of this borrowing, the columnist writes, already exceeds the bank's deposit base.
Over the past three years, the bank's share in the total volume of such operations, according to the author's estimate, has risen from 6% to more than 50%. Since the summer of 2023, the State Bank of Pakistan's open market operations portfolio has increased by 5.5 trillion rupees, and more than 100% of this increase, Husain claims, was accounted for by one bank. According to its latest annual report, more than 97% of such borrowings were due to be repaid within one to seven days, while their volume exceeded the bank's equity by more than tenfold.
