Countries that more successfully reformed SOEs generally strengthened financial supervision and regulation, relaxed interest rate controls, and reduced directed credit. They also tended to privatize banks and relax entry restrictions once these reforms were underway. Nearly all countries that have attempted SOE reform have included this aspect in their reforms. Sometimes it was effective, and sometimes it was not. In part this is because such changes must be made in conjunction with other reforms.
Differences also arise because contracts vary so greatly across countries and even across companies.
In the next section we discuss various types of contracts governments have used in reforming SOEs with an eye towards determining what works and what does not.