Governance Arrangements for State Owned Enterprises

Vagliasindi, Maria

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ACCOUNTABILITY;    BENCHMARKING;    COMPETITIVENESS;    CORPORATE GOVERNANCE GUIDELINES;    INFRASTRUCTURE SECTORS;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-4542
RP-ID  :  WPS4542

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

The aim of this paper is to shed newlight on key challenges in governance arrangements for stateowned enterprises in infrastructure sectors. The paperprovides guidelines on how to classify the fuzzy andsometimes conflicting development goals of infrastructureand the governance arrangements needed to reach such goals.Three policy recommendations emerge. First, some of thestructures implied by internationally adopted principles ofcorporate governance for state owned enterprises favoring acentralized ownership function versus a decentralized ordual structure have not yet been sufficiently"tested" in practice and may not suit alldeveloping countries. Second, general corporate governanceguidelines (and policy recommendations) need to be carefullyadapted to infrastructure sectors, particularly in thenatural monopoly segments. Because the market structure andregulatory arrangements in which state owned enterprisesoperate matters, governments may want to distinguish thestate owned enterprises operating in potentially competitivesectors from the ones under a natural monopoly structure.Competition provides not only formidable benefits, but alsounique opportunities for benchmarking, increasingtransparency and accountability.Third, governments maywant to avoid partial fixes, by tackling both the internaland external governance factors. Focusing only on one of thegovernance dimensions is unlikely to improve SOE performancein a sustainable way.