Colombo Plan Accountant Returns From Pakistan

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27643, 27 April 1955, Page 6

Colombo Plan Accountant Returns From Pakistan

“The Press’* Special Service

NEW PLYMOUTH, April 26. A New Zealander who has seen the 1 birth of a number of industrial enterprises in Pakistan has returned after two and a half years as an accountancy expert with the Pakistan Industrial Development Corporation. Mr H. W. Glasgow, .of New Plymouth, was a Colombo Plan pioneer and watched new Industries grow as part of the plan to increase industrialisation of a country anxious to save foreign exchange and concerned with the peed to feed its 80,000,000 population. He travelled 30,000 miles a year teaching staff accounting and costing methods, and instructing in the use of equipment. The Development Corporation was established in 1952 to initiate such industries as heavy engineering, paper, ute, sugar, cement, textiles, shipbuilding, and natural gas. The company set up on private lines, was in effect private enterprise in reverse. Normally the Pakistan Government builds a project and then asks for share capital, after first receiving assistance from the Colombo Plan, World Bank, or Foreign Operation Administration, the successor to the American Point Four programme. Development was significant, though slow for a country of such size, but the snowballing effect

of the establishment of certain key industries was most marked. The Zealpak cement factory? named after New Zealand and Pakistan, represented a really major enterprise. Cement,was required for factory Construction, housing for refugees—who, for exainple, increased the population of Karachi by almost 2,ooo,ooo—and for irrigation- works. Due to go- into production shortly, it would produce 800 tons a day. - Natural gas discovered at Sui was easing the power problem in development to a certain degree, and it would be piped to a number of factories, including the Zealpak, 300 miles away. Industries were generally built where the raw materials were most readily available, said Mr Glasgow. A large fertiliser factory has been built on the banks of the Indus in the-Punjab, very much off the. beaten track. In the same area the German firm of Krupps was working with the Pakistan Government in a search for iron ore deposits. ' . One of the problems for Industrial development Was the . need for many enterprises to build their own power-? generating stations. Another was that people had tq.be trained in,machine operation—which was almost totally foreign to them: Women did not take part in the plan except in remote instances, ana he had never seen a woman operative, Mr Glasgow said.