Thursday, May 31, 2007

public .. private.. public..

Recently, a number of companies have been taken down off the trading bourses and especially those in the service sector due to their performance reaching a red line in terms of profit and loss.

Such companies like Oman Air, which was first a government owned company then privatized to give the private sector the chance to revitalize it with new blood and it has been returned to an SAOC state because the Omani government's recent decision to pull out from Gulf Air permanently. Another company that is also disappearing from the economic radar is the Oman Pharmeucitical Company that has also had its share tradings halted pending the negotiations on what aspects of join corporation they could have with the government. And finally, the rumor that everyone has been hearing about: Oman Mobile being gulped up again by OmanTel because of poor management issues.

Whether or not these stories are true is yet still to be seen, but the fact is here is the underlying questions that beckons to be answered? What was the whole point from privatizing these companies if in the first place you were going to re-grip them back into the SAOC state?

It also stands to the question in that which, is the government seeing it as a fit strategical play to bring in these companies into the government sector after making bucket loads of cash from other sources?

Too many question and not enough answers.

3 comments:

Abdullah Al-Bahrani said...

I agree with you. This creates the impression that if a company is failing, it will be helped out. The more important question is why are these entities failing? Why should we throw more money at an entity that is not profitable, it doesnt make it more profitable to do so!

Amjad said...

You're in Oman, where everything is possible.

Sleepless In Muscat said...

per your request:

by the way, those are not the only companies that have been de-privatized. just in case you didn't know.

Amjad:

That doesn't mean that I should jump off the cliff like everyone else.