The Power Table: SOEs: To privatize or not to privatize?

The agenda on this week’s Power Table is whether State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) should be privatized or not. SOEs play a critical role in Africa’s economy, providing infrastructure and services such as electricity, water provision, freight logistics, transport and telecommunications. The argument goes that these are entities of national importance and are able to provide services to the public at a lower cost than would otherwise be the case in private hands. But years of mismanagement, corruption, wasteful expenditure have led to many SOEs registering serial losses and becoming increasing reliant on bailouts from government, which are often funded through higher taxes. This has also led to increased arguments that many SOEs would be better run in private hands. To debate this further, CNBC Africa is joined by Advocate Fay Mukaddam, Chartered Director SA & Governance Specialist at the Institute of Directors in South Africa, Menzi Ndhlovu, Senior Analyst at Signal Risk and Peter Attard Montalto, Managing Director at Intellidex.