BY PATRICK MOGOLI

STATE-OWNED enterprises, SOEs, have a bad rap in the community of businesses. Shielded by governments from the stringent performance tests private sector companies are subjected to by stakeholders and the general investing public, SOEs are generally lackluster, money-losing corporations.

At the seminar, “The Way Forward for State-Owned Enterprises”, participants offered divergent ideas on how to make government-owned corporations as productive and efficient as private sector players are obliged to be.

A quick solution, panelists say, may be to expose SOEs to competition, even against private sector operators. Francis Kariuki, Board Member, EAC Competition Authority, and former CEO of the Competition Authority of Kenya, says that the unbundling of the energy sector in Kenya will result in more competition between state-owned enterprises and the private sector. He believes that when faced with such critical performance indicators, government corporations will be forced to improve governance and productivity.

Keen to revolutionize the economy, Kenya’s President William Ruto has signed the Privatization Act to allow private sector discipline into government-owned transport companies as a first step to the full deregulation of other sectors of the economy.

Jamshid Kuchkarov, Deputy Prime Minister of Uzbekistan, says that for his country, the main priority is to create more opportunities for the private sector to thrive.