Long road to corporatisation

FOR two decades now, there has been a drive to split up mega state corporations, carve out niche markets and streamline operations.
The key policy words were privatisation and corporatisation and that process has been going on “off and on” since the early 1990s. The catch phrases have been: “streamline operations”, “make organisations leaner, meaner, more cost-efficient and more productive”.After 20 years of this process, it is time for a review.How has the corporatisation and privatisation processes gone so far? What has it yielded?
How many state-owned corporations have actually been corporatised and privatised?
Are their operations leaner, meaner, more cost-effective, productive and yielding profits.
The answers to these questions are uncertain and therefore we must reasonably assume that the success of this process is uncertain.There have been some strong performances by entities such as the Bank South Pacific but many others have limped along.
The corporatisation and privatisation process is not complete with many of them.
Many of them have simply split up into different components, depending on areas of responsibilities such as the provision of goods and services as against regulatory services and so on.
There are strong adherents of this process such as former member for Moresby Northwest and public enterprises minister Sir Mekere Morauta.
If Sir Mekere has had things his way, we would have seen all or most state-owned enterprises in private hands.
He would argue, with sufficient evidence to support his case, that the state is not a good manager of business.
Indeed, its primary role, Sir Mekere would argue, is to remain maker and
implementer of laws and setter of policy and ensuring the policies are translated into workable and implementable programmes.
Big enough tasks there to be wandering into other fields where the profit motive might work directly against the motive to provide services to the people.No argument there.
Strong adherents of these entities remaining firmly in state hands such as former state enterprises minister and former Angoram MP Arthur Somare would argue that state corporations have very important service obligations that, once privatised, would severely hamper the state’s ability to
deliver services to the people.
State enterprises such as Telikom, Post PNG and PNG Power, among others, fit this category.
In the hands of a private entrepreneur, there would be no overriding drive to bring services out to
the rural areas where the ability to pay for these services are simply non-existent.
Consequently, these services would be concentrated in the urban centres.
The irony that this is exactly describing the status quo, not withstanding, such is the argument put forward.
The International Monetary Fund annual report of 1998 found that it pays for the state to retain some important responsibilities for provision of services to the people for the private sector will never and it is not its job to undertake such responsibilities.
Clearly, there is a need now for a good look at all the state-owned enterprises and what their roles are.
Are they duplicating each other’s tasks and, therefore, competing in negative fashion?
Are they providing critical services which, in the hands of the private sector, might suffer?
A ministerial or eminent public service committee needs to take this review and recommend to government just what ought to remain in government hands and what ought to go.
Once the recommendation is in, it should be implemented forthwith.
That is so much dead wood that the government is carrying that is costing very important kina that should be going to development.
At the same time, some important services need to be retained in government hands with good money invested in them to provide the services they should be.