ABSTRACT
The core of the state-owned enterprises, accounting for about half of all employees, is formed by some 1,500 centrally managed enterprises. Each is the responsibility of a ministry, which in the past controlled the enterprises directly or through an intermediate level of sectoral enterprise unions or integrated plants. The management of the remaining state-owned enterprises is decentralized: they are run by provincial, district or local authorities. The choice of sectors reveals the government’s belief that state-owned enterprises should continue to operate in industries in which there are already private enterprises in considerable numbers. No less common variant of the commercialization of state-owned enterprises can be called quasi-privatization. Numerically the most important organizational form of private enterprise is still the family firm in trade, in the service sector and in manufacturing.
