Мемлекеттік мүлікті жекешелендіру

Transferring something from the public sphere to the private

Privatization (rendered privatisation in British English) can mean several different things, most commonly referring to moving something from the public sector into the private sector. It is also sometimes used as a synonym for deregulation when a heavily regulated private company or industry becomes less regulated. Government functions and services may also be privatised (which may also be known as "franchising" or "out sourcing"); in this case, private entities are tasked with the implementation of government programs or performance of government services that had previously been the purview of state run agencies. Some examples include revenue collection, law enforcement, water supply, and prison management. Another definition is that privatization is the sale of a state owned enterprise or municipally owned corporation to private investors; in this case shares may be traded in the public market for the first time, or for the first time since an enterprise's previous nationalization. This type of privatization can include the demutualization of a mutual organization, cooperative, or public private partnership in order to form a joint stock company. Separately, privatization can refer to the purchase of all outstanding shares of a publicly traded company by private equity investors, which is more often called "going private". Before and after this process the company is privately owned, but after the buyout its shares are withdrawn from being traded at a public stock exchange.

The term privatizing first appeared in English, with quotation marks, in the New York Times, in April 1923, in a translation of a German speech referring to the potential for German state railroads to be bought by American companies. In German, the word Privatisierung has been used since at least the 19th century. Ultimately, the word came to German through French from the Latin privatus. The term reprivatization, again translated directly from German (Reprivatisierung), was used frequently in the mid 1930s as The Economist reported on Nazi Germany's sale of nationalized banks back to public shareholders following the 1931 economic crisis. The word became common in the late 1970s and early 1980s as part of UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher's economic policies. She was drawing on the work of the pro privatization Member of Parliament David Howell, who was himself drawing on the Austrian American management expert Peter Drucker's 1969 book, The Age of Discontinuity. There are also private entities that may perform public functions. These entities could also be described as privatized. Privatization may mean the government sells state owned businesses to private interests, but it may also be discussed in the context of the privatization of services or government functions, where private entities are tasked with the implementation of government programs or the performance of government services. Gillian E. Metzger has written that: "Private entities [in the US] provide a vast array of social services for the government; administer core aspects of government programs; and perform tasks that appear quintessentially governmental, such as promulgating standards or regulating third party activities." Metzger mentions an expansion of privatization that includes health and welfare programs, public education, and prisons.

The history of privatization dates from Ancient Greece, when governments contracted out almost everything to the private sector. In the Roman Republic private individuals and companies performed the majority of services including tax collection (tax farming), army supplies (military contractors), religious sacrifices and construction. However, the Roman Empire also created state owned enterprises—for example, much of the grain was eventually produced on estates owned by the Emperor. David Parker and David S. Saal suggest that the cost of bureaucracy was one of the reasons for the fall of the Roman Empire. The rulers were counseled by the Taoist clergy that a strong ruler was virtually invisible. During the Renaissance, most of Europe was still by and large following the feudal economic model. By contrast, the Ming dynasty in China began once more to practice privatization, especially with regards to their manufacturing industries. This was a reversal of the earlier Song dynasty policies, which had themselves overturned earlier policies in favor of more rigorous state control. In Britain, the privatization of common lands is referred to as enclosure (in Scotland as the Lowland Clearances and the Highland Clearances). Significant privatizations of this nature occurred from 1760 to 1820, preceding the industrial revolution in that country.

The first mass privatization of state property occurred in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1937: "It is a fact that the government of the National Socialist Party sold off public ownership in several state owned firms in the middle of the 1930s. The firms belonged to a wide range of sectors: steel, mining, banking, local public utilities, shipyard, ship lines, railways, etc. In addition to this, delivery of some public services produced by public administrations prior to the 1930s, especially social services and services related to work, was transferred to the private sector, mainly to several organizations within the Nazi Party." Great Britain privatized its steel industry in the 1950s, and the West German government embarked on large scale privatization, including sale of the majority stake in Volkswagen to small investors in public share offerings in 1961. This has been reverted by the same party in Britain in the early 2020s with the state owned Great British Railways. The United Kingdom's largest public share offerings were privatizations of British Telecom and British Gas during the 1980s under the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher when many state run firms were sold off to the private sector. The privatization received very mixed views from the public and the parliament. Even former Conservative prime minister Harold Macmillan was critical of the policy, likening it to "selling the family silver". There were around 3 million shareholders in Britain when Thatcher took office in 1979, but the subsequent sale of state run firms saw the number of shareholders double by 1985. By the time of her resignation in 1990, there were more than 10 million shareholders in Britain. Privatization in Latin America was extensive in the 1980s and 1990s, as a result of a Western liberal economic policy. Companies providing public services such as water management, transportation, and telecommunication were rapidly sold off to the private sector. In the 1990s, privatization revenue from 18 Latin American countries totaled 6% of gross domestic product. Private investment in infrastructure from 1990 and 2001 reached $360.5 billion, $150 billion more than in the next emerging economy. opinion polls and public protests across the countries suggest that a large segment of the public is dissatisfied with or have negative views of privatization in the region. In the 1990s, the governments in Eastern and Central Europe engaged in extensive privatization of state owned enterprises in Eastern and Central Europe and Russia, with assistance from the World Bank, the U. S. Agency for International Development, the German Treuhand, and other governmental and non governmental organization. Ongoing privatization of Japan Post relates to that of the national postal service and one of the largest banks in the world. After years of debate, the privatization of Japan Post spearheaded by Junichiro Koizumi finally started in 2007. The privatization process is expected to last until 2017. Japan Post was one of the nation's largest employers, as one third of Japanese state employees worked for it. It was also said to be the largest holder of personal savings in the world. Criticisms against Japan Post were that it served as a channel of corruption and was inefficient. In September 2003, Koizumi's cabinet proposed splitting Japan Post into four separate companies: a bank, an insurance company, a postal service company, and a fourth company to handle the post offices and retail storefronts of the other three. After the Upper House rejected privatization, Koizumi scheduled nationwide elections for September 11, 2005. He declared the election to be a referendum on postal privatization. Koizumi subsequently won the election, gaining the necessary supermajority and a mandate for reform, and in October 2005, the bill was passed to privatize Japan Post in 2007. Nippon Telegraph and Telephone's privatization in 1987 involved the largest share offering in financial history at the time. 15 of the world's 20 largest public share offerings have been privatizations of telecoms. Privatizationindex19982002Bulgaria 4.0 3.0Czech Republic 2.0 1.75Hungary 1.5 1.5Poland 2.25 2.25Romania 4.5 3.75 Slovakia 3.25 2.0Slovenia 2.5 2.5 Russian Federation 3.0 3.5

The largest public shares offering in France involved France Télécom. Egypt undertook widespread privatization under Hosni Mubarak. Following his overthrow in the 2011 revolution, most of the public began to call for re nationalization, citing allegations of the privatized firms practicing crony capitalism under the old regime.

Due to low levels of native capital accumulation in the former Central and Eastern Europe, the rapid privatization preferred by international institutions (EBRD, IMF, World Bank) and other foreign banks was a de facto call for international bidding, reflecting the assumption that foreign investment would play a major role.

In post reunification East Germany, by the end of June 1992, the Treuhandanstalt had privatized 8,175 companies, with 5,950 left on hand (4,340 remaining to be sold and the remainder to be liquidated). June 1992 was also when the last East German on the board of the Treuhand left. By the end of 1994, Treuhand had sold almost everything, having only 65 firms left to privatize as of December 1994. More than 80% of the privatized businesses were bought by foreigners (chiefly West Germans 75%). Romania's first privatization took place on 3 August 1992. There was "very little" privatization during 1992: only 22 state owned enterprises were privatized. The pace picked up throughout the following year, with more than 260 companies privatized. Four of the 22 enterprises privatized in 1992 were sold to foreign investors. In 1993, 265 companies were privatized, followed by 604 in 1994. Two companies were sold to foreign investors during this period, one each in 1993 and 1994. At the start of 1999, 4,330 companies were left to be privatized, with 5,476 having been sold during 1993–1998. At the end of 1998, only 2.4% of privatized companies had foreign participation.

Arguments for and against the controversial subject of privatization are presented here.

In economic theory, privatization has been studied in the field of contract theory. When contracts are complete, institutions such as (private or public) property are difficult to explain, since every desired incentive structure can be achieved with sufficiently complex contractual arrangements, regardless of the institutional structure. All that matters is who are the decision makers and what is their available information. In contrast, when contracts are incomplete, institutions matter. A leading application of the incomplete contract paradigm in the context of privatization is the model by Hart, Shleifer, and Vishny (1997). In their model, a manager can make investments to increase quality (but they may also increase costs) and investments to decrease costs (but they may also reduce quality). It turns out that it depends on the particular situation whether private ownership or public ownership is desirable. The Hart Shleifer Vishny model has been further developed in various directions, e. g. to allow for mixed public private ownership and endogenous assignments of the investment tasks.

Privatization can also refer to the purchase of all outstanding shares of a publicly traded private company by private equity investors, which is more often called "going private". The buyout withdraws the company's shares from being traded at a public stock exchange. Depending on the involvement of internal and external investors, it may occur through a leveraged buyout or a management buyout, tender offer, or hostile takeover.