PSIRU researches the privatisation and restructuring of public services around the world, with special focus on water, energy, waste management, and healthcare. It produces reports and maintains an extensive database on the multinational companies involved and on the financial crisis’ impacts on public services and PPP.

The first paper examines the impact of the economic crisis on public services, including government reponses and implications for companies operating in public services. Download Economic crisis and public services – note 1 December 2008

The second paper focusses on credit squeeze and recession, which are combining to make PPPs almost impossible to finance, anywhere in the world. Traditional government borrowing and procurement can still be used to implement infrastructure programmes. Download Crisis note 2: A crisis for PPPs? January 2009

This core database is financed by Public Services International (PSI), the global confederation of public service trade unions.

Some 447 enterprises have been privatized in Algeria since 2003, making the Treasury obtain some 1.4 billion euros, declared Thursday the Algerian Minister of Industry and Investment Promotion Hamid Temmar.
“The revenue from the sale of public enterprises under privatization is estimated at 137 billion dinars (1.37 billion euros),” said Temmar, quoted by the APS news agency. “These recipes involve the privatization of 447 public enterprises during the period from 2003 until the first quarter of 2008,” said the minister, answering an oral question in the National Assembly. According to Mr. Temmar, these privatizations have allowed the preservation of 40,000 jobs and the creation over 19,000 new jobs.” The Algerian government has repeatedly reaffirmed its commitment to privatize the state enterprises, which are too weighty to manage, except those so-called “strategic” or “of sovereignty” such as the oil company Sonatrach, electricity and gas Sonelgaz and railways.
Source: ennaharonline

The Corner House presents research about private equity that during the last two decades became an integral component of the world’s financial system – at a time when financial markets overshadowed the productive economy. Private equity was invariably behind the multi-billion buyout deals, and mergers and acquisitions that swept across the US and Europe, creating a new type of corporate conglomerate that is reshaping the way business is conducted.
Insofar as it constitutes a new form of corporate ownership, private equity poses new challenges to labour unions, NGOs and community groups because it has a significant and distinctive influence on taxation policy, corporate governance, labour rights and public services, and thus deeply affects society, human rights and environment alike.
These challenges are especially clear in Asia, which has become more attractive for private equity firms since mid-2007 when the “credit crunch” took hold and diminished the scope for the huge deals in Europe and North America.
This 54 page ‘work in progress’ paper (339KB) looks at the global growth of private equity and its social, environmental and political impacts, using India as a case study of its growing importance in Southern countries. It concludes with an outline of private equity’s vulnerabilities that may provide opportunities for public concerns to be addressed.

The single editor blog “Boycott Novell” asks the question that moves many progressive cellular users: Is Symbian really open source? And if so, then what is the meaning of open source compared to — let us say — Free software in its purer form? The answer contains an instructive piece about software licences, patents and power politics in the programmers world. Read more

In Greece there is a growing re-appropriation movement against Super Markets and increasing prizes for all everyday goods. Read more