OUR new finance minister, Muhammad Aurangzeb, is preceded by a strong lineage.

Our first finance minister, Ghulam Muhammad, began as an assiduous accountant with Mahindra & Mahindra. He turned trusted courtier in Bhopal and Hyderabad states. Before independence, Ghulam Muhammad had helped the then finance minister Liaquat Ali Khan prepare India’s first home-grown union budget.

Post 1947, Liaquat, now prime minister, appointed him as our country’s first finance minister. In 1948, GM presented our first budget and submitted the draft of our First Five-Year Plan. Later, as governor general, he birthed Ayub Khan’s martial law.

Since then, we have had finance ministers from varied crèches, including the World Bank, Citibank, the State Bank, and now Habib Bank. The most frequent occupant of this post has been a chartered accountant, Ishaq Dar. He would have happily volunteered to serve a fifth term, had Prime Mini­s­ter Shehbaz Sharif not decided otherwise.

The latest — Muhammad Aurangzeb — is also an ex-Citibanker. He made his name with ABN-AMRO in Holland, where he acquired a Dutch nationality. He had to surrender that on becoming finance minister, though he retains his fluency in Dutch. That will prove useful to him when interpreting the........

© Dawn