indi.ca

This pump used to be a person until the government nationalized him. His name was Wayne. Wayne Octain.

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I don’t quite get this. The Financial Times is reporting that the (Sri Lankan) government is pushing a bill that will allow for complete government takeover or under-performing assets in which the state already has a controlling interest. The Daily Mirror, somewhere in is labyrinthine ePaper, is saying this without the qualification about already being essentially state owned.

Mmmm, and the reliable DBS Jeyaraj is saying “The draft bill enables the Govt to”identify”privately owned businesses&assets as “underperforming”&”under utilized”& appropriate them”. This assertion is quite scary. It implies that the government could decide that my isso wade cart is underutilized and take it, or my satellite TV company.

If what the FT says is true, however, then the situation would be more like where they took Sri Lankan Airlines back from Emirates, or the whatsitcalled, cooking gas facility back from Shell. In both cases I think the government bought back minority stakes from private shareholders and made them completely state owned. The Sri Lankan Airlines case was incredibly petty (Mahinda wanted people bumped from a flight and got pissed) and with the albatross of Mihin Lanka, they’re running the airline demonstrably worse. Other cases were where both Waters Edge and Sri Lanka Insurance were both privatized and then re-nationalized. The gas thing I don’t know, I use Laugfs.

So WTF is this bill? In one aspect, it merely means taking over assets which the government already controls. The current State Resources Ministry gave a recent interview in which he talked about leasing minority stakes, but this bill would seem to make such buys more tricky for private companies.

In another interpretation, this bill would make business more tricky for anybody, as the government could take over any private company.

I’m inclined to go with the former explanation (the FT report that this is for already state-controlled enterprises). It seems more logical (not really a determining factor) and more inline with the governments past actions. However, word is that this bill is being rolled through Parliament, like, now, which gives the public zero time to understand it. These things should be presented to the public for comment or at least looking at without going through a mish-mash of news reports. I think this is both in the service of the people (who get to know what’s going on) and the government (who can avoid rumors spreading).