Non-Market Controls and the Accountability of Public Enterprises in Tanzania

This text locates the inefficiencies of the traditional public enterprise model within its management and contextual factors. The former include overprotection from consumer liability, statutory power to commit wrongs with impunity, legal limitations on their liability for negligence, contractual limitations in the performance of public services and protection from mortgages, debentures and bankruptcy proceedings.;Contextual factors include state use of public enterprises as instruments of intervention; state dependence on them for services, credit and employment; their excessive protection from courts, parliament and consumers and their use as dumping grounds for static technology in some cases.;The book traces the historical processes in which public enterprise structures of power were developed, and examines and analyzes the problems of public enterprise management and accountability in Africa generally and in Tanzania in particular. The book calls for a new model from political patronage and political barriers to economic efficiency.