Reforming Public Sector Enterprise: A Case For Commercialisation

The major concern of the Zimbabwe government is the size of its budget deficit and all that come with it. In particular, the source of resources to finance the deficit, its impact on the productive sectors of the economy; money supply levels and the rate of inflation; the proportion of capital and recurrent expenditure etc. Reducing the size of the deficit becomes therefore one of the most important objectives of the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) embraced by government in 1990. Critics have pre-emptied that the success of reforms being implemented in countries in the southern region (Zimbabwe included) is based on keeping budget deficits small, encouraging competition and higher productivity and abolishing marketing boards and privatising public enterprises (Poortman 1994; Hawkins 1993; Ndiweni 1993).

An IDS report on the Zimbabwe Government's reforms to the Public Sector Enterprises as a response to its ballooning budget deficit.