Gold Magazine April - May 2013, Issue 25 | Página 48

PRIVATISATION

Thinking

Out
Of The
(Phone) Box
No-one will lose out through the proposed
privatisation of Cyta,
says global expert Rolf Meakin.
By John Vickers. Photo by Harris Kyprianou

he arguments for and against privatisation of state-owned organisations are fairly
straightforward and, until very recently,
were still being hotly debated in the media
and among the employees of Cyta, the
EAC and the Ports Authority. Now there is
a widespread acceptance of the inevitability
of the privatisation of all three organisations and, as a consequence, the whole
question is being re-examined in-depth and
the fundamentals of what it will mean are
finally being discussed in a clearer manner.
Rolf Meakin is a senior partner in
PricewaterhouseCoopers’ global advisory
practice with over 20 years’ experience of
advising telecommunications operators on
the design and implementation of their
commercial, investment and organisational
strategies. He has seen both good and notso-good results of privatisation but he is
convinced that, provided that it is done
properly, the benefits are there for all to
see.
“For privatisation to work, a number of

48 Gold the international investment, finance & professional services magazine of cyprus

conditions need to be in place. The first is
the existence of an effective and efficient
regulatory framework,” he says. “In the
absence of this, privatisation can actually
be very damaging, especially if it is simply
transferring a monopoly into private hands,
which can be even worse than leaving it in
public hands. The regulatory framework
is absolutely essential and it involves both
economic regulation – prices, the investment – and also the protection of consumers.”
Privatisation often goes hand in hand
with competition, though in the telecommunications sector competition is now
the norm in most countries, including
Cyprus. The second condition required for
a successful privatisation process, says Rolf
Meakin, concerns clarity from the government about what it is trying to achieve
by privatising an organisation. “There is
a whole spectrum of goals that might be
set by government. For example, it could
be trying to maximise the proceeds it can