10 February 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, Feb 10, Reuter – A sword poised over a Gordian knot is the official symbol of the Philippine body charged with selling about 6.8 billion dollars in bad debts accumulated by the country’s two major government banks. “That’s an appropriate symbol for the work…
18 April 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, April 18, Reuter – China is negotiating with the Manila-based Asian Development Bank for six loans this year, a Chinese official said on Monday. Li Dongqun, alternate executive director on the ADB board, told Reuters in an interview that Peking wanted to move slowly…
27 May 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, May 27, Reuter – Philippine Airlines Inc’s loss in the 1987/88 fiscal year may delay government plans to privatise the state-owned carrier, industry analysts say. PAL posted a net loss of 67.98 million pesos in the year ended March 31, a sharp decline from…
Governments cynically scoop out value from their own companies. Privatisation will work only when the government sells more than 50 per cent of a state-owned company’s capital to the public and relinquishes management control. This has not happened. Successive governments have mostly destroyed value by divesting only thin slivers of public sector undertakings (PSUs) and…
The government must take courage and embrace privatisation Two numbers speak eloquently about our schizophrenia over privatisation: the Rs 2.11 trillion ($32.5 billion) package announced on October 24 to recapitalise public-sector banks (PSBs); and Rs 2.67 trillion ($41 billion), the total earned by the government in 26 years from the divestment of its stakes, in…