Privatizations

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Privatizations

An ABC of the CADTM and a historical perspective on illegitimate debts

22 January 2025 - by Eric Toussaint, Maxime Perriot

Founded in 1990, the Committee for the Cancellation of Illegitimate Debt (Comité pour l’Abolition des dettes illégitimes, earlier Comité pour l’Annulation de la Dette du Tiers-Monde [Committee for the Cancellation of Third-World Debt], the origin (…)
South Africa’s failed infrastructure privatisation and deregulation

12 February 2024 - by Patrick Bond, Greg Ruiters

Introduction The South African state is commonly said to be ‘failing’ – not only because yet again at the end of 2023, a recession hit. An alleged fiscal crisis, in the form of a public debt to GDP ratio in excess of 70 percent (mostly due to (…)
Pakistan’s misery continues

8 February 2024 - by Michael Roberts

Pakistan has a general election today. It will decide on the next government of the world’s fifth-most populous nation and the governments of its four provinces — Punjab, Singh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Around 128 million people can (…)
New wave of IMF-Imposed Privatisation in Pakistan

18 November 2023 - by Abdul Khaliq

With Islamabad already meeting the demand for raising power and gas prices, the privatisation of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) remained a top agenda item during the latest review of the $3 billion IMF standby arrangement. Towards the conclusion (…)
3 questions to Sushovan Dhar on the disastrous train accident in India

22 June 2023 - by Sushovan Dhar, Robin Delobel

The fatal train disaster in the eastern state of Odisha on June 2 is the country’s worst in more than 25 years. Indian Prime Minister Modi has blamed the local railway employees, as was done in Greece after the recent accident. However, can the (…)
Ukraine: Resisting creditors

23 May 2023 - by Eric Toussaint, Sushovan Dhar

Sushovan Dhar: What can be said about Ukraine’s debt 15 months after Russia invaded its territory? Éric Toussaint: I must first of all insist that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is an unjustifiable and morally unacceptable act of aggression. (…)
Greece: The infamy of a predicted terrible rail disaster

6 March 2023 - by Yorgos Mitralias

The following could be a dark humor joke, but it is a very real story and, above all, emblematic of this neoliberal and dilapidated Greece of the first half of the 21st century. Only a few hours before the terrible rail disaster of 28 (…)
Bank Privatization and the Never-finished Neoliberal Agenda

25 October 2022 - by C P Chandrasekhar

The long-standing debate on whether India’s public sector banks should be privatized has resurfaced in recent days. Two articles, besides numerous statements from advocates of ‘reform’, triggered this round of debate—one wittingly and the other, (…)
Privatisation of distribution

4 July 2022 - by Dick Forslund

An important step in the privatisation of electricity sales in South Africa is about to be taken. The process the government has embarked on is in effect a privatisation of sales, as in any privatisation of public property. Private investments (…)
India: Proposals against new attempts to privatise state-owned banks

11 March 2021 - by Eric Toussaint, Sushovan Dhar

Public sector banks account for more than two-thirds of the banking market in India. Currently, they are subjected to a systematic smear campaign launched by the reactionary Narendra Modi government, big media including the international press (…)
The World Bank’s response to COVID-19

29 October 2020 - by Susan Engel, Nadeen Madkour, Owain Williams

The COVID-19 pandemic hit a world already struggling to find the fiscal space to adequately fund health and other social services. In this context, it is important to note that the World Bank’s long-term approach to healthcare has severely (…)
Something’s got to give

14 June 2019 - by Amandla Editorial

The election of a new government should be a time of celebration. 25 years since the end of Apartheid should be the time of immense celebration. Yet, 25 years since the “dawn of democracy” and South Africans are engulfed by extreme forms of (…)
A New Wave of Water Privatisation in Indonesia

1 January 2018 - by Irfan Zamzami

The central government of Indonesia has repeatedly announced its intention to universalise access to clean water by 2019. To achieve this, an estimated 27 million new connections are needed, with a major investment gap of IDR 274.8 trillion (…)
G4S: When a private company is in charge of your security

11 April 2017 - by Jérôme Duval

The security context in Europe today doesn’t make everybody unhappy, especially among firms that have specialised in security and surveillance. Among them, the British G4S, to which many governments subcontract their dirty work, ranging from (…)
Greece: A Country for Sale

13 September 2016 - by Eleni Portaliou

The most persistent myth concerning Syriza’s capitulation to the troika is that it was a “forced choice.” To put it differently, “there was no alternative” to signing a third memorandum, given an extremely unfavorable balance of forces at a (…)
The Ouarzazate solar plant in Morocco: Triumphal ’Green’ capitalism and the privatization of nature

25 March 2016 - by Hamza Hamouchene

Despite the allure of the solar mega-project, the environmental/climate justice movement must question the Morocco’s propaganda and the emergent dominant global discourse around environmental governance to which it is linked. The urgent questions (…)
The Privatising Industry in Europe

24 February 2016 - by Sol Trumbo Vila, Matthijs Peters

Privatisations of state-owned assets have become a central plank of EU/Troika agreements with debtor nations such as Greece, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Portugal, but there has been little examination of their track record nor an examination of who (…)
Leaked EU memorandum reveals renewed attempt at imposing water privatisation on Greece

26 August 2015 - by Satoko Kishimoto, Olivier Hoedeman

The stubborn and aggressive imposition of privatisation by Troika goes against the will of Greek citizens and represents a direct attack on democracy.
Thessaloniki to vote on water privatisation

19 May 2014 - by Theodoros Karyotis

In a last-minute panic move, the Greek government, through a circular by Minister of the Interior G.Michelakis, declares “illegal” tomorrows’ grassroots referendum regarding water privatization in Thessaloniki, and threatens the organizers with (…)
18 May, Thessaloniki’s water referendum: One no, many yeses

12 May 2014 - by Theodoros Karyotis

Thessaloniki is a lively sprawling metropolis located in the north of Greece. As with the rest of the country, it is affected by increasing unemployment and poverty, a result of the government’s Troika-dictated policies, which have driven the (…)
Public debt in Poland: from the Communist period to the present economic crisis

10 March 2014 - by Gavin Rae

This paper considers the question of public debt and how it impacts upon other areas of socio-economic life in Poland, in the context of the recent global economic crisis. It begins by placing Poland’s public debt in its historical context that (…)
The new privatization plan for Cyprus: another blackmail from the Troika

9 March 2014 - by Leonidas Vatikiotis

In the middle of lethal fire is once again the Cyprus. On the one hand are the efforts of President P. Anastasiadis to close the Cyprus problem, requiring a solution which looks like to dichotomous Annan plan, which had rejected a decade ago from (…)
Pakistan starts privatization of agriculture lands

14 May 2009 - by Abdul Khaliq

Arab companies rush for corporate farming in Pakistan to lock up scarce water resources in agriculture belts as Federal Government offers one million acres of agriculture land to Arab monarchs, giving way to new corporate feudal system of it own (…)
Natural Resources are the Common Goods of Humanity

20 July 2008 - by CADTM

Controlling the use of natural resources is one of the major concerns of all governments. However, large quantities of these natural resources are found in countries of the South (oil, metals, diamond, timber, etc.) and thus attract the great (…)
Someone must speak up for Kenyans

8 May 2008 - by KENGO

Kengo is a coordination of grass roots organizations in Kenya, which the CADTM international network collaborates with. Here is their call for a campaign of solidarity with Kenyans being illegally detained. Comrades, Hundreds of poor, sick (…)