Occasional Papers

Privatization and Public Enterprises

By Richard Hemming, Ali M. Mansoor

September 15, 1998

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Richard Hemming, and Ali M. Mansoor Privatization and Public Enterprises, (USA: International Monetary Fund, 1998) accessed November 8, 2024

Summary

This paper examines the role that privatization can play within a wider strategy designed to overcome the problems associated with public enterprises. For this purpose, privatization is defined as a transfer of ownership and control from the public to the private sector, with particular reference to asset sales. It is therefore equated with total or partial denationalization. Economic efficiency is not only the key to improving the performance of the public enterprise sector, but is also the source of other gains often attributed to privatization, in particular, its favorable budgetary impact. To public enterprises that are subject to national or international competition, privatization offers the possibility of increased productive efficiency as government financial backing is withdrawn and bankruptcy and takeover become possibilities. The admissibility and desirability of privatization, as well as what types of enterprise should be privatized, ought to be determined by similar considerations in both industrial and developing countries.

Subject: Asset and liability management, Asset management, Competition, Economic sectors, Financial markets, Privatization, Public enterprises, Public sector

Keywords: Africa, Asia and Pacific, Asset management, Asset sale, Competition, Enterprise, Europe, Global, Government, OP, Privatization, Privatization policy, Privatization program, Privatization strategy, Public enterprise, Public enterprise sector, Public enterprises, Public sector, Sale

Publication Details

  • Pages:

    27

  • Volume:

    ---

  • DOI:

    ---

  • Issue:

    ---

  • Series:

    Occasional Paper No. 1998/015

  • Stock No:

    S056EA0000000

  • ISBN:

    9781557750051

  • ISSN:

    0251-6365