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PRIVATIZATION OF CORPORATIONS IN UZBEKISTAN IN COMPARISON WITH TRANSITIONAL ECONOMIES OF CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE
Jahangir KAKHAROV
Jahangir Kakharov, Lecturer at the Faculty of Economics, National University of Uzbekistan; consultant to the Asian Development Bank (Tashkent, Uzbekistan)
Introduction
The demise of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the U.S.S.R. signaled a rush to privatization in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The governments of these countries are trying to privatize, i.e. transfer state-owned-and-operated enterprises to private owners and/or managers in order to create a viable private sector, capital markets and other institutions and processes, which describe a free market capitalist system.
There is no historical precedent for the kind of transition from a central-planning socialist economy to a free-market economy that is now occurring in the republics of the former Soviet Union and Central Eastern Europe. Political structures and processes are changing at the same time as economic institutions and processes. Given this and social upheaval in these countries, it is not surprising that the privatization process has been inconsistent in application, chaotic, and generally difficult. Different approaches, techniques and mechanisms have been employed with varying degrees of success and results. Whereas some of the Central and Eastern European countries are considered to be far ahead in privatization process, Uzbekistan lags behind its former peers from socialist camp—Czech and Slovak Republics, Hungary, Poland, Estonia and some others.
The Uzbek government considers that it has adopted a unique transition strategy of gradual, state-guided development, in which stability and equality are principal objectives and an approach to large-scale privatization is mainly case-by-case and opportunistic. Pomfret and Anderson characterize Uzbek economic policies as “inconsistent gradualism,” which have appeared, in many circumstances, reactive, rather than part of a consistent strategy. Despite earning a name of a “slow reformer,” Uzbekistan is a transition country that has achieved certain significant changes in development of a market-oriented economy and a privatization process in comparison to the point when it started its existence as a sovereign state.
Initial Conditions and Their Influence on the Privatization Process
The introductory essay in Earle et al. argues that the diversity in the formulation and implementation of the privatization process across Central and Eastern Europe stems from differences in the economic and……………..
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