State-Owned Enterprises in the Middle East and North Africa Privatization, Performance, and Reform

Worldwide privatization has expanded rapidly but in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region progress has been markedly slow. The two main obstacles to privatization in the MENA region are seen to be the high level of overstaffing in public enterprises and the inability of economies to create jobs fast enough. This volume is divided into two parts. The first addresses key issues of an institutional and political economy nature to explain pressures for and against state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform and privatization. The second part of the book presents empirical studies of Egypt, Jordan, Sudan, and Turkey to illustrate the specific roles played by the state and by interest groups in the pace of SOE reform, as well as to analyze the negative impact on productivity and financial performance on an inflated public sector. The conclusions drawn from these studies are that social protection and effective labor redundancy policies should be addressed prior to privatization, and that there is a prerequisite for increased private sector investment in SOEs to accelerate MENA's integration with the world economy via trade-related programs and infrastructure.