Workshop on State-Owned Enterprises in the Development Process

This paper is set in the context of the OECD’s Working Party on State-Ownership and Privatization Practices intermediate output on “SOEs and inclusive growth”. The final report covering a number of countries will be published by the OECD as part of a publication aimed at identifying national practices toward using state controlled corporate entities to support developmental priorities.
The developmental question is achieving the right balance for the country in question. Corporate actions by state-controlled bodies are an important aspect but they can be used for much more limited political and economic goals, although their macroeconomic impact may be much wider. This paper therefore focuses on one city state, Singapore, to make the task manageable. Being a city state, one does not have to deal with agricultural policy which often forms a crucial part of the development problematique. Analysis of other countries in the SE Asia region is thus more discursive in nature.
Part I discuses Singapore since independence in 1963. Part II briefly discusses each SE Asian nation. For the purpose of this paper, SE Asia includes Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Thailand. However, some reference is made to Vietnam and its recent policies.