Corporate Governance for Banks in Pakistan: Recent Developments and Regional Comparisons

The emerging economies in the South Asian region have embarked on a bold reform process to develop the banking sector. This development has improved the transparency and accountability of the banking sector because these countries focused on ‘best practice’ corporate governance for banks. In view of a rapidly developing market with a slow pace of information dissemination, adverse selection and moral hazard problems are likely to be on the rise and may need a mechanism to train and discipline bank management. It was, therefore timely for the central banks in the region to introduce a ‘best practice’ for the banking system as a whole. This study provides a survey of recent developments in corporate governance of the banking sector in Pakistan and a comparison of similar developments in two other regional economies, namely, India and Bangladesh. In addition to a theoretical discussion on this issue, we also provide an overview of the banking sector restructuring and highlighting important features of the codes of corporate governance established by central banks in the sample countries. In conclusion, we present a comparison of the major differences in these measures across countries and comment on the pace of these developments.