It has been universally recognised that the instrument of public ownership, widely used during post-colonial rule and post war reconstruction period, is no longer the most desirable instrument for development. The signing of WTO has also led to severe global competitive pressure on national industries with the realisation that they will not survive unless they are competitive in international markets. Further, due to the Government's inability to raise taxes and reduce expenditure, the use of taxpayers' money in running industries has come under serious criticism in most of the countries. These pressures have led to large-scale privatisations around the world.

Apart from Britain and France, there are several other countries where privatisation has taken place. Worth mentioning are the privatisations in the erstwhile East Germany, China and Chile. While privatisation started in Germany as far back as in 1959, over 14,500 companies were sold by Treuhandstalt (THA) post 1990, following reunification of Germany. Privatisation was carried out through public sale, sale by option, trade sale, management / employee buy-outs etc. THA was able to successfully complete its assigned job.

In the case of China, market reforms started in 1998. The reforms included corporatisation and listing of large and medium size State Owned Enterprises (SOE) on the domestic and foreign Stock Exchanges and permission to foreign investors to invest in various infrastructure and utility businesses, such as railways, toll roads, ports and power plants. In 1978, over 75% of the industrial output was produced by the state sector which is reported to have fallen to 34% by 1995. The collective sector is reported to have increased from 32% to 37%, individual sector (small capitalist businesses) from 1.8% to 13% and others (including all other capitalist enterprises - local and foreign) from 1.2% to 16.6%. Thus, the private sector grew at the expense of the state sector. At the 15th Party Congress held in September 1997, the Central leadership decided to engage in fundamental restructuring of some 300,000 SOEs within a 3 year framework by 2000, through mergers, acquisitions, corporatisation / privatisation and declaring bankruptcies, injection of fresh capital through the introduction of the joint stock system and systematic lay off of excess workers. According to the World Investment Report 1997, foreign direct inflows to China amounted to US $ 42.3 billion in 1996. The level of FDI inflows in other years were also similar in comparison to annual inflows in India, of the order of US $ 1.5 to $ 3 billion every year.

Chile is another example of notable privatisations. Deregulations, liberalisation and privatisation have been the major elements in the Chilean economic policy since 1973, reversing a long trend of the growth of public sector. Since 1973, it has undergone 4 major privatisations: the transfer of expropriated enterprises during 1974-75; the extensive privatisation during 1975-79 of enterprises that were not expropriated but in which the state had ownership; the privatisation of bankrupt private corporations (including banks) from 1984 to 1986; and finally the privatisation of large public corporations (mainly public utilities) which started in 1986 and continued throughout 1988.

Among the specific cases of successful privatisation, the privatisation of ENI (Italy), is cited as one of the most successful privatisations. ENI was used by the Italian Government as a flagship company for privatisation. In the beginning there was a lot of opposition, but the success of the transaction ultimately changed the entire perception about privatisation in Italy. The Government stake was sold in four tranches of around 15% each, between 1995 - 1998. The sale of each tranche resulted in the improved perception about the value of ENI shares. While the first tranche of 15% shares fetched US $ 3.95 billion in December 95, the fourth (last) tranche of 13% shares (which resulted in ENI becoming a private company) fetched the Government US $ 7.3 billion, that is, more than double of the first offering. Post privatisation, the value of Government shareholding increased dramatically to the extent that the Government's remaining stake in ENI (38.6%) had about the same market value (US $ 22 billion) as the market value of 85% shares after completion of the first offering in December 1995.