ABSTRACT
The contributions included in this volume indicate, as may be expected, substantial variety in the distributional impacts of privatization in different countries. Their coverage is not entirely uniform. For example, Paul Cook and Colin Kirkpatrick focus on ownership options; so do Saman Kelegama and Carl Greenidge; and Cristián Larroulet’s analysis of the Chilean situation is chiefly in terms of divestitures. Ryszard Rapacki refers to ‘grass-roots’ privatization as well, a term he employs to denote the stupendous development of new private enterprises in Poland. Leonar Briones deals with reprivatizations in the main, which have been the major focus of privatization activity in the Philippines. Kraiyudht Dhiratayakinant refers to several non-divestiture options (especially franchising, leasing and contracting-out) besides the divestiture option, which is not yet popular in Thailand. Muzaffar Ahmed concentrates on divestitures. J.J.Bala refers to both divestitures and ‘commercialization’, a term used in Nigeria for a variety of marketizing measures of restructuring the public enterprises not disposed of. Ismail Muhd Salleh includes in his study not only divestitures, partial or full, but corporatization, leasing, sale of assets, management contracts, subcontracting, and build-operate-transfer/ build-operate arrangements. Sunil Mani has comments on both the limited divestments in India and the memorandum of understanding (MOU) technique adopted in the case of the many continuing public enterprises. Ryszard Rapacki focuses on the unemployment issue and on the wealth and poverty effects of privatization and systemic transformation in Poland. Carl Greenidge provides a comprehensive picture of all distributional impacts in Guyana. The papers, on the whole, provide us with insights on the equity impacts not only of divestitures but several non-divestiture options. The latter are quite prominent in many countries as the papers indicate.
