it is increasingly apparent that the privatization experiment in sub-Saharan Africa has failed. This book shows that the state is set to dominate service delivery for the foreseeable future in much of the region, and that the public sector must be considered as a viable policy option for the delivery of water and electricity.
The Note analyzes Zambia's reasons, and measures for success in privatization. It stipulates the following key indicators for assessing the performance of divestiture programs in Africa: the extent of divestiture; fiscal impact; the efforts made, and achievement in broadening ownership; the level of foreign direct investment attracted; enterprise post-privatization performance; the depth and quality of program design and management; and, transparency and government commitment. Of these, Zambia rates medium to high on all indicators, and the note outlines that commitment is what gave prominence to the private sector's role in the process. However, the privatization program has not been without its problems. Because of its fragile economic situation, the country was not readily attractive to foreign investors; but, multinational companies who have invested in Zambia are impressed with the way the program is being managed. As a result, the country is now one of the most attractive to investors in Africa.
There is a vast literature for and against privatizing public services. Those who are against privatization are often confronted with the objection that they present no alternative. This book takes up that challenge by establishing theoretical models for what does (and does not) constitute an alternative to privatization, and what might make them ‘successful’, backed up by a comprehensive set of empirical data on public services initiatives in over 40 countries. This is the first such global survey of its kind, providing a rigorous and robust platform for evaluating different alternatives and allowing for comparisons across regions and sectors. The book helps to conceptualize and evaluate what has become an important and widespread movement for better public services in the global South. The contributors explore historical, existing and proposed non-commercialized alternatives for primary health, water/sanitation and electricity. The objectives of the research have been to develop conceptual and methodological frameworks for identifying and analyzing alternatives to privatization, and testing these models against actually existing alternatives on the ground in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Information of this type is urgently required for practitioners and analysts, both of whom are seeking reliable knowledge on what kind of public models work, how transferable they are from one place to another and what their main strengths and weaknesses are.
This report introduces an analytical tool to help readers understand how international drivers of corruption affect governance and corruption at the country level. It provides a means for identifying these drivers and suggests opportunities for international actors to to improve governance.
Electricity, natural gas, telecommunications, railways, and water supply, are often vertically and horizontally integrated state monopolies. This results in weak services, especially in developing and transition economies, and for poor people. Common problems include low productivity, high costs, bad quality, insufficient revenue, and investment shortfalls. Many countries over the past two decades have restructured, privatized and regulated their infrastructure. This report identifies the challenges involved in this massive policy redirection. It also assesses the outcomes of these changes, as well as their distributional consequences for poor households and other disadvantaged groups. It recommends directions for future reforms and research to improve infrastructure performance, identifying pricing policies that strike a balance between economic efficiency and social equity, suggesting rules governing access to bottleneck infrastructure facilities, and proposing ways to increase poor people's access to these crucial services.
In the last decades of the 20th century, privatization has been a key policy instrument in the move to more market-based economic systems in all parts of the developing world. Privatization, however, has not necessarily been accompanied by an increase in market competition. Many public utilities have been privatized as monopolies and in addition regulatory systems have been developed to restrict their market power and protect the interests of consumers. This volume brings together a collection of papers that provide theoretical and empirical insights into privatization and regulation, as well as policy perspectives in relation to developing countries.
