ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the role of non-government agencies in the control system with a view to making it substantively efficient. The rationale of government control over a public enterprise cannot be abridged into ‘ownership control’. There can be a control against capital expenditure when the enterprise has to look to the government for funds, while it is left relatively free to undertake the expenditure if it is financed from its own reserves. The case for control rests on considerations of macro economic and social goals, synthesised with the narrow interest of raising a net revenue. There is a conceptual virtue in decentralising the control system. It makes necessary a rigorous determination of the criteria by which the decentralised agencies are expected to work. Many prevailing systems of control over public enterprise represent bare control instruments rather than the entire fabric of control relationships.
