Public Enterprises in Greece

Abstract

lntroductlonOver the last twenty years, the literature on the comparative performance of public and private enterprises, and on the privatization of public enterprises (PEs) in developed and developing economies has been extensive and growing 1. The related literature on this subject in the case of Greece is very limited. To our knowledge there are only two recent studies on this subject by Provopoulos (1982Provopoulos ( , 1985. The purpose of this paper is to help close this gap by investigating the state, performance, and prospects of public firms in Greece. This will enable us to understand their contribution to the economic development of the country. In the course of the analysis, issues relating to the comparative performance of.public and private firms and prospects for privatization of the former will be treated in passing due to space limitations.Unlike in other mixed economies, the PE sector in Greece includes a wide spectrum of economic activities, ranging from the production of goods and services traditionally associated with public utilities (e.g. electricity, transport, telecommunications) to productive activities focusing upon the country's economic development and, quite often, with activities usually undertaken by private firms in other countries (e.g. hotels, manufacturing industries). The great diversity of activities of Greek PEs emphasizes the strong resemblance of the country's PE sector relative to that of developing rather than of develThis is a revised version of a paper presented at the 43rd Congress of IIPF, Paris-France, August 24-28, 1987. The authors would like to thank Stella Pagoni for expert typing. and the literature cited therein. The above list i s by no means exhaustive,

State‐owned Enterprises in Greece: The Evolution of a Paradigm 1996–2016

“…Beyond the normative framework and the formal policy directions, reform programmes were implemented through small steps that took time to produce outcomes and in many cases faced resistance and had to confront inherent problems of the SOE sector. In practice, most SOEs suffer certain long standing weaknesses that relate to the broader characteristics of the public sector in Greece, such as (over-) politicization, party patronage, lack of management independence, manipulation by the government, corruption, inefficiency and the existence of interest groups extracting rents from the SOEs' activity (Georgakopoulos et al 1987;Lioukas and Papoulias 1990;Haritakis and Pitelis 1998;Tsoukas and Papoulias 2004;Papoulias 2007). These factors coupled with the statism tradition of Greece and the low reform capacity of the Greek public sector (Featherstone 2005;Spanou 2008) have limited the potential of a radical transformation of SOEs over time.…”

“…However, this notion of social responsibility depends on each company's criteria and is far from a broader context of social policy. In contrast to the nationalization era, where SOEs were used as policy instruments for serving a range of social and economic goals including development, income distribution, poverty and employment (Ministry of Finance 1986;Georgakopoulos et al 1987;Lioukas and Papoulias 1990), the scope of these practices after corporatization, privatization and liberalization has been limited. In the past decade, most of the SOEs under study have developed social responsibility programmes that encompass a variety of initiatives (Table 5).…”

The Politics of Privatisation: Redrawing the Public–Private Boundary

“…The third major wave of nationalisations occurred under the first Pan Hellenic Socialistic Movement (Πανελλήνιο Σοσιαλιστικό Κίνημα, PASOK) government of Andreas Papandreou. To a certain extent, this socialist wave of nationalisations ('socialisations') reflected a government strategy of assuming control over 'strategic' sectors of the economy, as with the nationalisations of Larco (mineral exploitation), Pyrkal (munitions industry), the Lavrion lead mines and the Heracles General Cement Company (Georgakopoulos et al 1987;Teitgen-Colly 1987). By 1983, 19 out of the top 50 industrial concerns in Greece were controlled either directly or indirectly by the state -a single-year increase of eight very large firms (Bermeo 1990: 4).…”