Privatization : Lessons from Jordan
While many governments in the Arab world have undertaken some privatizations since the early 1990s, many retain surprisingly large portfolios of fully, majority, or minority state-owned enterprises (SOEs). As in other parts of the world, privatizat...
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| Format: | Brief |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2013
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2012/07/16795703/privatization-lessons-jordan http://hdl.handle.net/10986/16171 |
| Summary: | While many governments in the Arab world
have undertaken some privatizations since the early 1990s,
many retain surprisingly large portfolios of fully,
majority, or minority state-owned enterprises (SOEs). As in
other parts of the world, privatization often causes
concerns among citizens. Workers fear loss of employment and
benefits; consumers worry about price increases; and voters
mistrust government officials. Jordan's experience
during 1998 - 2008, when the Government of Jordan (GOJ)
privatized fourteen SOEs in telecommunications, electricity,
air transport, mining and other sectors with technical
assistance program financing from the U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID) demonstrates both how
privatization can provide a wide range of benefits to
society and how to implement a privatization program.
Privatization is contentious, and it can be difficult to
demonstrate the benefits. To do so, it will be useful to
establish a pre-privatization baseline in terms of the
enterprise performance results, employment effects, fiscal
effects, investment, and competitiveness to be expected in a
counter-factual case where the enterprise remains under state-ownership. |
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