 Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem, As-Salaamu Alaykum, Pakistan. Welcome back to Corporate Governance. And we are moving forward with the different issues, different contextualizations, different frameworks, and different factors which tend to affect corporate governance within institutions and also within national economies. Today, we're going to talk about problems faced by developing economies because Pakistan is a developing economy. And today, we are going to look at its introduction and then it will be followed by many additional sessions which will tend to elaborate upon the factors and the contextualization which is affecting these developing economies. Ladies and gentlemen, what we see is is that in developing economies, there are various circumstances, various known and unknown factors, various matrices, various interest groups, various vested interests, and many other circumstances which are affecting those developing economies. Many developing and emerging and transition economies lack or are just now in the process of developing the most basic market institutions. Economic growth in these countries has turned out to be lower than expected, especially in the 21st century. We see with the advent of the 21st century, there was a complete transition. There was a complete flux of new technologies which led to the virtual universe towards virtual trading, towards virtual business, and more so, a globalization of economies, of laws, of regulations, and also of expectations. Now, what we see is that countries like Pakistan had many challenges. One challenge definitely being our population. Second, that most of our businesses and industries, especially in the large business segment, are managed or are owned by a few families, then we have this elite culture, or we have this feudalistic approach towards even business and towards growth and economy, and all of this basically has led to a quagmire situation and has led to a multi-flux and confusion and overlap of institutions which has actually undermined good governance and also the fact that we have been unable to meet the challenges of corporate governance in the way it was envisaged, in the way it was expected, and in the way the developed economies are moving forward, which has resulted in much more affluence and much more national and institutional wealth in those countries. But we don't see that over here. And therefore, in this particular situation, what basically emerges is the situation that we currently are in right now, Pakistan is on the verge of a financial default, and we have seen that there has been this flux of the dollar that only in the past one month we have seen that the dollar has skyrocketed by more than 30%. And we have seen that there is a hyperinflation taking place right now of 40%. We see that the products are lacking right now. We do not have the resources to import various ingredients and various parts which are required by our industries in Pakistan to come out with their products. We basically see that there is a outflow of institutions and a dwindled and a very gray market which is unable to predict what is going to happen in the future. And therefore, we have also seen the dip of the stock market, the unprecedented rise of gold exceeding 166,000 per dollar. And so all of these things tend to make the corporate governance and the good governance a very complex animal, an animal very difficult to tame, an animal which becomes unpredictable. So these are the challenges. And then another global challenge of the post-COVID scenario, that also is aggravating the whole scenario. And we see that there are many paradoxes which have been created. And there has been a paradigm change taking place in these economies, especially like Pakistan and the Sahak region. And therefore, we are seeing that the Sri Lanka example in which it has defaulted. And what has happened over there is that the whole market and the whole economy and the whole nation is in a state of chaos and flux and we cannot predict what is going to happen. So all of these things are challenges of developing economies. Now, in this whole process, we also see that privatization has taken place to generate funds. The government has sold many institutions but it has not been able to bear the fruit which was again anticipated. And as a result of that, what has happened is that we have lost our golden hens which were laying the golden eggs and timely relief basically was gotten. And now another scenario has emerged in the past week that the government has put in abeyance most of the corporate laws and has come out with a new law to further privatize our 10 gold institutions like PSO, like Sweden-Ordin, Sweden-Southern like Oil and Gas Development Corporation and these type of institutions which basically are monopolies and have been able to generate immense value and wealth for the nation. But due to our weak economy, we basically have to sell these and sell up to 100% ownership to different countries or to different large global groups just to stay afloat. And therefore, we basically see that privatization does not seem to have brought about the anticipated improvements in corporate efficiency just like I was mentioning that it has had its own shortfalls and shortcomings and the state and para-state institutions such as privatization funds remain the largest shareholders of companies. So again, I mean look at the example of the Karachi Electric Supply Company. As this is one example, look at what is happening in Capco, look at what is happening in other institutions in the IPPs which have been privatized and now we are seeing that they intend to even privatize the distribution companies like Lesco, like ISCO, like MAPCO and all of these other organizations. So they would be consequences of all of this and to incorporate good governance would be a very, very big challenge. Internal owners dominate in many companies while the external owners do not have enough voting power. The capital markets are just developing and do not facilitate the inflow of new capital as intended. So again, what we're going to see with the sell-off of various institutions, with the sell-off of various golden hands in the corporate sector owned by the government would be that it would create an eschewed market and it would be very difficult to regulate and facilitate this whole inflow of capital and also inflow of management and the consequences definitely they would want their own securities and it would be very difficult to regulate but yeah, that is the challenges of developing economy. In the transition economies, a lot of details of the mosaic are still missing, trying to develop a system of good corporate governance in these countries is made difficult by problems such as complex corporate ownership structures. So just like I was mentioning, again, if we tend to put certain laws in abeyance, if we provide certain preferential laws, if we do away with the framework of accountability, of transparency, of meritocracy, of fair play, then the consequences definitely would always be in the negative and not in the positive. So therefore, this whole transition which is taking place right now is very challenging for Pakistan and also for other countries around the world as we are seeing many countries in Africa. We have seen what has happened in Sri Lanka could also happen in some countries in the Far East. So this whole post COVID scenario is very unpredictable. The need for corporate governance in the developing and emerging and transition economies extends far beyond resolving problems stemming from the separation of ownership and control and that is something that I was talking about. And again, it's not only issues of ownership and control. The developing and emerging economies are constantly confronted with issues such as number one, the lack of property rights. And therefore, what we see is that that can also be very consequential. The abuse of minority shareholders, which has been rampant since the past seven decades in Pakistan, contract violations due to the lack of implementation of laws and also the, you can say, the non-efficacious working of our judicial system because it is overburdened with so many issues and so many cases and so many petitions. And that tends to undermine the whole context of good governance and corporate governance. Asset stripping, which I just talked about and again, how those assets are being stripped from the National Exchequer and going into vested interests and very large business groups who would be wielding their own interest and also ensuring that they would be able to maximize profits without following maybe the laws and regulations which are in place and then self-dealing whereby vested groups are basically creating conglomerates and also are creating economies which are dominated by a few oligarchs and that again would be extremely detrimental to the developing and emerging economy of Pakistan. And we have to ensure that such fallacies and such ineducacies and such limitations and constraints are professionally managed, are done in the best possible way to the rule of law and a merit-based, non-discriminatory, non-biased approach towards the different corporate laws which tend to exist. And thirdly, to try to balance out the rights of the aristocracy, of the bourgeois and of the proletariat and that basically means of the elite, of the middle class and of the working class and also to create that balance and not only in benefits but also in roles and responsibilities. So that is very important. Thank you so much.