ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the political dimension relevant to the establishment of public enterprise and draws on governmental perceptions responsible for the prominence of public enterprise. The concept of public enterprise, briefly, is that it refers to an organisation which combines in itself elements of ‘publicness’ and ‘enterprise’. Viability and cost-price relationships are the elements that distinguish a public enterprise from several public activities, for example, those in the field of education, justice, and environment. The term ‘public enterprise’ signifies that the organisation should represent a synthesis of the characteristics of ‘publicness’ with those of ‘enterprise’. The emergence of public enterprise in developed economies has, by and large, been linked with post-development problems. The dominance of foreign capital in the national economy has been a significant factor in giving a stimulus to public enterprise in many developing countries.
