ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the re-emergence of the private sector in the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic (CSFR) during the transition period from late 1989 to mid-1992. It analyses the problems of implementing transitional economic reforms. The chapter explores the challenges facing small- and medium-scale business owners and managers of privatizing state-owned enterprises (SOE) during the transition. It discusses actions that must be taken in the Czech Lands and Slovakia in the future to assist entrepreneurs and managers to expand in an emerging market economy. Despite the devastation of the private sector during the Communist regime, the CSFR emerged from the Velvet Revolution with some strong potential advantages on which to build a market economy and a larger private sector during the 1990s. Both small businesses and SOEs had limited access to credit during the transition. Even by 1992, the State Investment Bank would only make short-term loans to small business for operating expenses.
