Governments are selling assets that they would have never been expected to relinquish in the past, including public services, telecommunications facilities and nuclear power plants. Nevertheless, politics is not completely taking a back seat to private sector growth and continues to have a profound effect on the course and pace of privatization everywhere. Several newly-elected leaders are announcing new programs. Fernando Cardoso, the winner of Brazil's presidential election in October, has promised to follow through on his campaign pledge to sell several important state holdings. The new president of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma, also has announced that he intends to expand the sale of government-owned companies.
Institutional changes are the basis for increased privatization elsewhere.
Argentina plans to split the National Atomic Energy Commission into three agencies as part of a widely-discussed proposal to privatize the country's nuclear power plants. Lithuania's parliament may authorize creation of a privatization agency and state property fund to analyze firms under state ownership and recommend which should be sold. Meanwhile, the Hungarian government is considering merging two privatization agencies into a single one, and is going ahead with the sale of several electricity companies and the Budapest Bank. Romania also is reorganizing the institutions now charged with selling state-owned firms. Leadership changes in other countries suggest that sales of state holdings will continue as before.