KARACHI, Nov 5: The World Bank is preparing a provincial-level gross domestic product (GDP) for all the provinces in consultation with the federal government, reveals a Concept Note of the World Bank submitted in October this year.

The monitoring of GDP at the provincial level has always remained a taboo for the decision-makers in Islamabad. When the Sindh Bureau of Statistics was set up in Karachi in the early 1980s, the federal government moved in swiftly to stop it from disseminating information on a comparative account of provincial income generations and income being accrued in the provinces.

Dr Hafiz Pasha, now Vice-President of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), who was a deputy chairman of the Planning Commission in Islamabad and served in various capacities with the federal government, once told an informal gathering of reporters that late General Ziaul Haq issued special instructions to prohibit any information about the monitoring of GDP at the provincial level.

Any reference to the provincial GDP reminds the bureaucrats in Islamabad of the tough time they had to face in dealing with the politicians and economists of former East Pakistan.

The late G.W. Chowdhry, a former Bengali bureaucrat and communications minister in the late General Yahya Khan's cabinet during 1969 to 1971, in his book "Last Days of Pakistan" gives a detailed account how the Planning Commission was bifurcated into two.

Of these, one was of the West Pakistanis led by late M.M. Ahmad and the other was entirely of the Bengalis on the framing of 1969-70 and 1970-71 budgets and a five-year plan. The strength of East Pakistanis was their knowledge of economy and finances of their provinces and others in Pakistan.ebr3