Contested in the political arena of the developing country concerned. A reduction of public expenditure combined with the elimnination of subsidies on basic goods and services affected predominant6y th, lower income groups who are disproportionately dependent on the provision of subsidized public services. Large price incre.asts on staple goods and essential services such at transportation effectively meant a Lurther rdjuction in living standards in an environrne't of economic decline and rising unemployment. rhe "medtiling" with the public sector as the last economic stronghold for a large poltion of the population proved to be a potential social explosive, rendering the implementation of public sector reforms politically dangerous. Thus, attempts to establish extensive privatization piograms all too often tot bogged down in drawn-out political debates, resulting in a iather slow take-off of .ivatizations until the late 1980s.

However, despite these political problems, quite a substantial number . f SOEs were already privatized during the period 1980-87. In a recent Worid Bank study analyzing the techniques of SoE privatizationsl 1, Candoy-Sekse compiled information on privatization transactions worldwide for this time period. While the provided information is very detailed for the 83 countries included, some essential data are unfortunately missing. In particul^r, information on the date of the transaction as well as its size in terms of the sale amount is usually not provided. Thus, it is impossible to determine the privatization volume and to track its development over time, only allowing for a comparison of countries based on the aggregate number of transactions. This, of course, carries the danger that individual countries are misrepresented if compared by the number of transactions, given that the importance of each privatization program relative to the size of the economy cannot be eetermined. Furthermore, Candoy-Sekse herself points out "that the information provided is uneven" 1 2, depending on the availability of data from government sources or World Bank reports.

But despite these caveats, some interesting inferences can be made regarding the extent of privatizations during 1980-87. The study lists a total of 696 completed privatiz. +;on transactions, 456 of which were carried out in the 64 developing countries included. According to these data, Sub-Saharan Afiica and Latin America and the Caribbean, two regions with a stro,.g record of government involvement in economic activity, were the most intensive privatizers during the period. Europe and Central Asia had practically no privatizations due to the fact that Eastern Europe at that time still had a centrally planned economic system. ;he la;gest privatizers in Sub-Saharan Africa ware Guinea with 40 transactions, follow-d by Cote d'Ivoire with 36, Togo with 17, and Niger with 14. In Latin America, Chiz. .eads the list with 40 individual privatizations, followed by Jamaica with 34, Brazil with 29, and Mexico with 10.

With respect to the sectoral distribution of privatization transactions, agribusiness clearly dominates with over 100 transactions, followed by services with 70 transactions and manufacturing with another 55. It is interesting to note that these three sectors account for a total of 50 percent of the total number of transactions, while energy, finance,

> II Candoy-Sekse (1988). 12ibid., p.vii

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