Privatization, which has been called the largest economic reform in Taiwan in 50 years, is imminent. However, privatization is no panacea. For it to be successful, there are a number of conditions. . . .
Let's take a hypothetical company. A year-and-a-half ago it began on-paper planning to increase production of Product A. To do this it must go to Country B to buy the machinery, which must be of Type C. The purchase will require that a number of people go abroad for several days.
Once the plan is completed in every detail large and small, it is run past several layers of managers. Then it is submitted to the Legislative Yuan's open-market review committee. There, people who know nothing about this line of business get to chop up and alter the plan at will. And through the whole process the firm's competitors can clearly see the company's strategy.
Even worse, by the time the plan gets through all this cutting and pasting and is finally approved, the market may have changed. Product A is no longer so popular; consumers now want Product D. But what can be done? The plan has been approved, and the budget allocated. And if the plan is not enacted, the firm will be criticized for "inadequate implementation." Under the circumstances, the planned trips abroad go forward, and the planned purchases are made. All the firm can do is muddle through.
Privatization on the way
"With business practices of this kind, it's a wonder such firms aren't all bankrupt already!" Anybody who has even an inkling about business knows that the keys to success are flexibility and operational autonomy, and has only disdain for the type of management practiced in our "hypothetical" company.
What's frustrating is that there are 82 firms in Taiwan, with total annual revenues exceeding NT$2.5 trillion, that do business just this way-they are the state-run enterprises (SREs) under various levels of government. However, for a long time now, these SREs, sheltered under the umbrella of the state, have not had to be truly business-like to make their way. They have enjoyed monopolies. So if they don't keep up with the market, well, they might be criticized by consumers or make a little less money, but they certainly needn't worry about going bankrupt.
However, the SREs' carefree days are soon to end. The National Development Conference, held at the end of last year, passed a resolution demanding government agencies privatize enterprises under their jurisdiction within five years. Otherwise, "enterprise directors will be removed, and the supervising agencies will be punished"! After this resolution was passed, even the managers of SREs, who have always preferred to meet change by burying their heads in the sand, could not sit idle. It seems like privatization, which has for a long time been discussed but has progressed with only faltering steps, is going to begin in earnest.
The Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) has listed 42 SREs for privatization within five years (see Table 1). That means there will be an average of two firms completing privatization every quarter. Compare this to the past: Since 1989, when the government established task forces in various ministries to promote privatization, only a few firms have been privatized (see Table 2). With the new high-pressure timetable, the majority of public enterprises will have to respond quickly. The large firms that have enjoyed monopolies and for whom privatization will be complicated-like petroleum, power, telecommunications, and sugar-are in for a particularly rough time.
Global competition
Why the big rush to privatize? The main reason is that the larger environment has changed greatly.
"The 1990s is the era of global competition. Taiwan can't just close itself off and say everything is fine," says Casper Shih, a consultant to the China Productivity Center and a member of the CEPD's privatization advisory committee. Most SREs are involved in activities intimately related to daily life, and are the foundation for national economic development. They may well be making huge surpluses-last year Chunghwa Telecom took in NT$49 billion in profits, CPC and Taipower more than NT$10 billion each-but that doesn't mean they have been efficient. They have many shortcomings compared to similar service-providers abroad.
Shih, who is on the board of Chunghwa Telecom, notes that telecom charges are very high in Taiwan. For example, a call to the US at normal times costs NT$24 per minute, nearly 2.5 times the NT$10 per minute it costs to call from the US to Taiwan. Even more absurdly, because of a problem in the purchase of exchange equipment, now you have to wait a year-and-a-half just to get a mobile phone number. Meanwhile, over at Taipower, which has a monopoly on power supply in Taiwan, the company has never been able to resolve the problem of the instability of the power supply. Every time there is a power loss in an industrial park, companies lose tens of millions of NT dollars.
"Utilities are a key factor in whether Taiwan firms will be competitive, and whether foreign firms will invest here," says Shih, adding in a serious tone: "The performance of the SREs is really worrying."
It appears that the pressure of global competition is already pushing the SREs. Once Taiwan enters the World Trade Organization, markets in which SREs had enjoyed monopolies-such as petroleum refining, electricity, telecommunications, and even cane sugar-will have to progressively open up. Looking at things from the point of view of keeping these firms healthy and in Taiwan, and considering that after Taiwan lifts restrictions, foreign firms will compete directly, it is better to first alter the domestic market to break the monopolies, and force competition among local businesses.
Whose market?
"Market liberalization," which has been much bandied about in the past few years, is worrying SREs. Take one example from petrochemical products. CPC has had a monopoly on "naphtha cracking." Its main product-ethylene-is an indispensable raw material for all petrochemicals goods. Given Taiwan's status as a major petrochemicals nation-it accounts for one-third of the total value of global production-demand for ethylene is naturally high, and there are large profits to be made. However CPC has never been able to keep up with demand by expanding production, so Taiwan is only 40% ethylene self-sufficient, and must import large amounts. When CPC cannot maintain supply or there are fluctuations in the international ethylene market, it creates a major problem for tens of thousands of downstream firms.
This is why Formosa Plastics, a private manufacturer which is midstream in the petrochemicals production chain, has been trying for ten years to be allowed to enter the ethylene supply market. Says Wu Shin-che, assistant vice-president of Formosa Plastics: "Taiwan's main competitors, Korea and Southeast Asia, have expanded production of ethylene several times over in recent years. If CPC keeps monopolizing the market and doesn't get its act together, we'll all be dragged down."
In 1993, Formosa Plastics began construction of Taiwan's sixth naphtha cracker (the first five all belong to CPC). In addition, it went a step farther and invaded CPC's core business-petroleum refining.
The first Formosa Plastics petroleum products will come on the market next year. But that's not the only thing CPC has to worry about. At the end of last year, the National Development Conference demanded a timetable for liberalization for domestic petroleum products. The timetable will open the market in two stages. Imports of heating oil and aviation fuel will be permitted starting in January of 1999, and imports of all petroleum products will be completely liberalized beginning in 2002. The countless private trading companies in Taiwan will start chipping away at CPC's long-held monopoly on petroleum product imports.
Taipower-one of the "big three" SREs along with CPC and Chunghwa Telecom-is likewise facing new challenges. Taipower's ability to supply electricity has never been able to keep up with consumption. Every summer, when everyone has their air conditioning going full blast, Taipower is stretched to the limit, and sometimes has to ration power.
With this in mind, in 1995 the government began permitting private investment in power plants, approving 11 private-sector projects. With only limited land available for power stations, the government in one case even requested that Taipower "kindly allow" a private company to have priority in land use, and also establish a technical consulting service team to assist private firms, so that Taipower could begin to feel what it is like to have to compete.
Economic power to the people
Some scholars argue that privatization is not the only means by which SREs can be improved. They argue that SREs need only adopt private-sector corporate practices, and they think it is unnecessary to turn the whole system upside down. However, Schive Chi, vice-chairman of the CEPD, says that in terms of political philosophy or political economy, privatization has a deeper meaning: "It represents 'returning economic power to the people.' It is an extension of 'popular sovereignty'."
Look back at the origins of SREs. At that time, Taiwan was poor. Industries like power, telecommunications, and petroleum require large investments, and offer slow returns. Where would people have found the money to invest in them? Moreover, these industries are intimately related to the basic standard of living and to national defense. If in private hands, they could be manipulated and sabotaged, with incalculable results. For these reasons the government invested in these businesses to supply the private sector with needed goods and services, while at the same time managing the market.
But today the private sector is flush with idle capital looking for investment opportunities. It is necessary to create new economic territories to be explored. In recent years, whenever the stock market has skyrocketed irrationally and speculation has been rife, scholars have called for the government to eliminate monopolies, liberalize markets, and privatize SREs, thereby absorbing private capital into more healthy activities.
"Why should the government saddle itself with all the trouble of managing businesses? Why should it produce and manage, being both player and referee? Let the market mechanism function. Then the government only has to be the referee-that's enough!" says Schive Chi.
With private enterprises trying to break into previously prohibited markets, SREs have done little in the face of the changing situation. Schive Chi reveals the frustration the government feels when he says: "First implement liberalization, and allow other firms into the market. Only with competition will there be a stimulus to privatization."
After the shock of liberalization, SRE managers, who previously resisted the tide of privatization, will know one thing with great certainty: Whether they want to face it or not, whether they act or not to change their practices, the rules of the game will be very different. If they do not rapidly privatize, they will be like lumbering old giants trying to fight against nimble children, and their sense of crisis will grow with each passing day.
"We can no longer put off privatization, or else how can we compete with the private sector on an equal footing?" says Steven Lee, director of the General Planning Department at Taipower. CPC's P.J. Lin, who as vice-chairman of the Management Planning Committee is involved in paving the way for privati-zation, admits that after the big private corporations begin eating away at the market, the billions in profits that SREs earn each year will disappear. "If we don't get down to business, when the time comes who will want to invest in us and buy our stock?"
The early bird. . .
To be sure, if people are not willing to reach into their pockets and invest, then, however ideal privatization might sound, it will not even get off the ground. There are previous examples of this. The Ministry of Economic Affairs wanted to privatize Taiwan Machinery Manufacturing Corporation. But because TMMC had been losing money heavily, when it went on the market it was shunned. The only thing to do was to find specific corporations who were willing to buy parts of TMMC. In the end, its shipbuilding, steel, and steel alloy operations were separated and sold off in their entirety to three different private firms.
Do the math: In the next five years, 42 SREs will be lining up to issue stock. If each company only issues 50% of its stock, meeting the bare minimum for privatization, that will put NT$1.4 trillion worth of new securities on the market. That is virtually equivalent to two-thirds of the capitalization of all the nearly 400 currently listed companies! The impact on the capital market will be unprecedented.
"When investors have eaten their fill, there will be no money left. The later that firms privatize, the more difficult it will be to find investors. As a result, their stock prices may be depressed, so that state assets are sold off at fire-sale prices. Or, it may simply prove impossible to find private investors at all by that point. That would be very regrettable," states one expert at a consulting firm which is currently planning for issuing stock as part of the privatization of SREs.
Clearly, then, privatization shouldn't be put off much longer, for all of the impressive reasons stated above. Besides those considerations, moreover, there are also a number of other benefits that people only discuss in hushed tones.
Parasites on the state
"Some people live off the SREs, and the SREs live off the nation," says one entrepreneur who is very familiar with the embarrassing political side to SREs. Public corporations are in highly specialized fields, and are monopolies, so their activities are hard to monitor and there are no competing firms which might provide a basis for comparison. Thus sometimes elected officials, criminal organizations, or those with special privileges get to live off the SREs' excess fat. In recent years the papers have been filled with stories of corrupt purchasing arrangements and fixed bidding; such incidents are only the tip of the iceberg.
"If it were just a matter of things costing a little more, then we could just write it off. But often the stuff [acquired through corrupt deals] is totally useless," says one affronted manager who prefers not to reveal his identity.
Meanwhile, average citizens have become accustomed to blaming SREs for various problems, and always demand compensation. CPC, for example, has paid out a total of NT$1 billion in compensation for pollution, explosions, and other such cases. Moreover, it has set aside NT$2.5 billion as a special "Give Something Back to Society" Fund for districts around Kaohsiung where CPC factories are concentrated. Each year more than NT$100-200 million is dispensed to keep on the good side of the local residents.
Similar things happen where there are power plants. If the local fishermen aren't catching many fish one year, they blame Taipower. When the harvest is not so good, farmers say that it's Taipower's fault. Whether the claims are justified or not, Taipower must cough up some money to handle the problems and "be a good neighbor." In fact, the company is simply afraid local residents will blockade the power plant and create a news story that makes Taipower look bad.
Besides having to deal with situations like these, in which the SREs can't really mount a defense, another heavy burden SREs cannot shirk is implementing state policies that are based on social or political concerns. Take Taipower for example. It is required to give preferential rates for specified uses, such as railroad operations, water pumping, streetlights, and schools. Each year it takes a loss of more than NT$3.1 billion on such items. Taipower also must write off most of the cost of supplying the remote, sparsely populated offshore islands. Penghu amounts to a loss of NT$700 million per year; Kinmen and Matsu, NT$800 million.
"Of course state companies cannot only emphasize efficiency. They also have a responsibility to remote areas and disadvantaged groups. But from the point of view of rational management, we hope that these de facto subsidies can be eliminated as soon as possible, or that the government will appropriate additional funds to compensate," says Taipower's Stephen Lee. One CPC manager is even more blunt: "You want us to get down in the trenches against the competition, but you don't let us slough off these burdens. Is it any wonder we can't perform as well?"
Looking to the future, after privatization of SREs (that is, when the state share of stock falls below one-half), even if the state still retains 49% of the stock and the chairman is appointed by the government, these companies will draw the line at non-economic burdens. M.S. Tsay, senior vice president of Yangming Marine Transport, which completed privatization last year, concludes: "The best way we can serve the government is to make money that the government, as the biggest single stockholder, will get a lot of. We can't accept extraneous burdens based on other policy considerations, much less get agreement to do so from the other investors."
Who can decide?
The conclusions seem obvious: There are many advantages to privatization, and many problems with continued state ownership. "Now the SREs are all very eager to privatize," states Cheng Wen-ching, vice-chairman of the government's Commission of National Corporations.
Yet, anxious as everyone seems to be, the power to decide on privatization is muddled, and there are many variables that public firms cannot control.
"There are too many mothers-in-law for SREs, and they all have their own opinions. We can't simply do what we would like," says P.J. Lin of CPC, putting his finger on the crux of the problem.
At CPC, they need to consult with their various bosses-in the Commission of National Corporations, the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the CEPD, the Cabinet, and the legislature-for matters large and small. The CPC asked for money for the 1997 fiscal year to cover the costs of issuing the first 10% of its stock, but unexpectedly legislators cut the item from the budget. The reason given was that the petroleum industry law, which will establish the new ground rules, had not yet been passed, so legislators criticized CPC for acting precipitously. Who would have thought, then, that at the National Development Conference six months later, privatization would become a major guiding principle. Suddenly, it seemed, all the previous procedural problems-such as the fact that the petroleum industry law has not yet been implemented, or the amended power industry law is still held up in the Legislative Yuan-had been wished away overnight!
The privatization process is still very uncertain. Indeed, the very term itself is often misunderstood, and used in a simplistic or distorted way.
"Privatization is not simply selling stock, like some kind of going-out-of-business sale of government assets," notes Schive Chi. "Besides the transfer of ownership, mapping out the operational future is even more important."
If the term is understood in a purely legal, regulatory sense, privatization is "achieved" when the government share of ownership falls from 50%+1 to 50%-1. It seems that with the transfer of a few shares, the enterprise is miraculously transformed, and its many cares-the special laws and regulations for public enterprises, public budget and accounting laws, the open bidding laws, anti-corruption laws governing civil servants, and so on-just melt away.
Alas, "do you think an overnight shift like this will improve performance? Impossible!" says Schive Chi. With the removal of the protective umbrella, the company is no longer free of the possibility of collapse, and the battle for survival has really just begun.
Getting down to business
"Privatization is a steady process of transformation. The enterprise must change first from within, with the thinking of each person in it. This cannot be done in haste," avers Stephen Lee, who just returned from Columbia University's Senior Executives Program.
In other words, the precondition to privatization is adopting private-sector business patterns. It is necessary to change that typical civil service mindset-serving the government, following regulations, and limiting your workload to doing only what your immediate superior assigns you to do-into one that shows dynamism and initiative. Government workers must become entrepreneurs, striving to develop business and exceed their performance targets.
It's easy to describe such a transformation. But it's another story to implement it among the tens of thousands of workers in the venerable old SREs. Indeed, the personnel problem is the hottest potato of them all.
"There is severe overstaffing, and productivity is too low," sighs one business person. For example, CPC's main Kaohsiung plant currently produces 570,000 barrels of refined petroleum per day, requiring more than 7000 employees. The Japanese company Cosmo, whose production is comparable to CPC's, has only 3000-plus staff, or one-half of the number at CPC!
Even more thorny is that most employees at SREs-especially in the middle and upper ranks- got their jobs through the civil service examination system, so their jobs are guaranteed by the government. Under the new "Privatization of Public Enterprises Regulations" approved by the Legislative Yuan in 1991, there is an incentive stipulation for "voluntary departure." Anyone who leaves their job can receive the "departure payment" under the "Retirement" provisions of the Labor Standards Law (which is nearly double the amount under the "Severance" provisions of the LSL). Moreover, the individual receives this amount even if they do not meet the LSL's requirements for age and seniority. And on top of that, the government came up with money to add a special bonus equivalent to seven months salary, making the incentive package downright mouthwatering in the eyes of most people.
After the passage of the law, many SREs began to implement voluntary cutbacks under these provisions. However, despite the incentives, not very many people have chosen to leave. In three years, only about 1200 people have left CPC; about 500 have left Taiwan Sugar Corporation. The pace at which the personnel burden is being reduced lags far behind the anticipated rate (see the accompanying article).
This mirrors the experience at Yangming Marine Transport, which originally belonged to the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, but smoothly completed privatization early last year. As Pai Kun-jung, vice-manager of the shipping department, describes it: "Two kinds of people chose voluntary departure. One is younger, with only four or five years in the company, with little emotional attachment to the company, and few worries about finding another job outside. The other is older, and very close to retirement anyway. By leaving early, they enjoy their retirement sooner, and pick up an extra several months' pay."
Civil service vs. business
The old and young depart first, so that the overall impact in terms of manpower streamlining is limited. This is because, in the main age cohort in which employees are concentrated-between 40 and 50-nobody chooses to leave. This makes for another worry for SREs: Given the "iron rice bowl" of state employment, the average age of employees is rather high. For example, at Taipower the average age is 43, with almost 20 years of seniority. Over the years, people have had their pay bumped up routinely, so that the average salary now exceeds NT$57,000. This is much higher than the average pay in Taiwan of NT$34,000.
Not only that, "the personnel charts and organizational structures of SREs are very different from private firms. These make it very hard to compete effectively in an open market," says Cheng Wen-ching.
In order to accommodate the complex government accounting and procedures and regulations, large SREs have hundreds or thousands of people working in accounting and general affairs. Personnel and anti-corruption departments also are heavily staffed, and there are many employees whose sole job is to deal with government documents. On the other hand, there are not enough people doing customer service and sales. The overweight-ing of administrative departments relative to operational departments is the classic indicator of a design in which "preventing mistakes is more important than increasing profit."
"With the government footing the bill, naturally it will keep a close eye on you," says Cheng Wen-ching with exasperation. He has asked his superiors to allow SREs to first, before becoming privatized, have a "structural reorganization phase." This would allow the transfer of many unproductive supervisory personnel to other tasks, and allow restructuring. But thus far no universally applicable rules have been approved; instead, each SRE must submit a separate plan of action.
The upshot, then, is that there is overstaffing and unproductive assignment of personnel, yet it is impossible to lay people off. The only thing to do is to "look for things to give people to do." For this reason, "diversification" has become the hottest topic in SREs.
Plenty of resources
"If you think about it, there are a lot of things that SREs can do," says Cheng Wen-ching in explaining diversification. For instance, "Taipower takes in more than NT$200-300 billion a year in revenues. With that kind of volume they could support a bank. Wouldn't it be good if they opened their own bank to handle their financial affairs?" Or, "CPC has fleets of fuel trucks on the highways, but in fact these are private trucking firms subcontracted by CPC. Why doesn't CPC train its own people to handle it themselves? They can establish their own tanker-truck fleet. . . ."
Cheng understands that these ideas are only pipe dreams given current government restrictions on SRE investment in unrelated business. "However, there's never anything wrong with planning ahead," he emphasizes. China Steel, which completed privatization two years ago, is a case in point. As soon as it was free of the restrictions, it opened one subsidiary after another, and now has set up an impressive seven or eight new firms in fields including transport, international trade, investment, and even wine importing.
"Even before the subsidiaries were set up, China Steel personnel already knew what jobs they would be doing in them. Department directors became general managers, office chiefs became managers. People who switched to the new subsidiaries could stand on their own and enjoy rapid advancement, not to mention pioneering new business fields and increasing revenues for the parent company. As a result, everybody worked even harder in their new jobs," says Cheng, with unbounded admiration for China Steel.
Hoping to keep up with this trend, Taipower recently established a diversification committee. It is currently overseeing manufacture of coal transport ships and investment in coal mines abroad. After the mobile-phone market was opened up early this year, Taipower invested in KG Telecommunications, a new private firm, thus entering into competition against its sibling state-run corporation Chunghwa Telecom.
"We want to let our employees know that the future needn't be narrow, that they can transfer out and have a 'second spring' developing a new career," says Stephen Lee. Taipower has, after all, had a monopoly on power supply in Taiwan for half a century, so its pool of personnel, skills, and experience is unmatched in the private sector. Future tasks will include power supply and transformer station engineering for the high-speed railway, soon-to-be-opened long-distance telephone services (Taipower has its own electronic information network), and maintenance of private-sector power stations. All of these are in Taipower's diversification blueprint. Also, the huge layouts for the more than 1000 security personnel Taipower hires can be reclaimed; idle land can be used for construction of skyscrapers or for development. . . .
"With so many resources in hand, if the firm can gain management autonomy, and employees are given stock options and incentives, then everyone will be working for the same goal. Who will worry then about Taipower maintaining itself?" says Stephen Lee, filled with anticipation for the future.
Learning by doing
Despite all the optimism, however, diversification is no panacea, nor is it a substitute for coping with the current pressure on SREs in their original fields of endeavor. Firms that want to survive must buckle down and do better what they do now. Sadly, despite wave after wave of discussion of privatization, regulations governing post-privatization competition are still vague and unsystematic. This is not only a problem for the SREs, who want to know how many of their existing advantages they will retain, but also for the private firms hungry for a taste of the new markets. So nobody is sure what to do next.
For example, Taipower has always been a comprehensive electrical power company, doing everything from power generation to transmission to distribution. But the current working draft of the "Power Industry Law" stipulates that no single company can monopolize all three aspects. Does this mean that Taipower must be broken up in the future? Also, what about nuclear power and hydroelectric power supply? One is directly connected to public safety, the other to management of water resources. Should they opened to the private sector?
To take another case, construction of power transmission lines is a "natural oligopoly" situation. Taipower already has an island-wide power transmission net. Based on the principle that there should be minimal duplication of effort, which would be a waste, is it necessary to open this market to allow private investors in? If it is not opened, and private power suppliers must transmit via Taipower lines, what would a "reasonable" fee be for "just passing through"?
Many questions remain unanswered, and often the power to decide is in the hands of the Legislative Yuan. It's always hard to predict what the legislature will do. Will all of Taipower's speculations about the future market and its specific plans for privatization be wasted effort?
"Taipower should have followed the example of Chunghwa Telecom, and waited for the dust to settle after the passage of the power industry law, before undertaking a corporate reorganization and beginning preparations for privatization. Now everything is all being done together, and it is a big mess," says an exasperated Stephen Lee.
The simultaneous undertaking of liberalization plus privatization may very well be the most complex economic reform undertaken since the government came to Taiwan in 1949. Schive Chi does not beat around the bush: "Right now we have to fight as we go, and improvise as we move forward." Several problems have been discovered in implementing the "Privatization of Public Enterprises Law," which was passed only six years ago. Areas needing amendment and clarification include preferential employee stock purchasing, retirement incentives, and many more.
"In privatization, pull one hair and the whole body moves," argues Schive Chi. "Before privatization began in earnest, it was hard to get a clear picture of all the details and complexity involved. But this is no excuse to procrastinate."
Be that as it may, even as the private sector is mobilizing for action, the SREs have yet to streamline and slough off their burdens, and the future battleground is still shrouded in fog. Taiwan's state-run enterprises face a tortuous race against time.
Table 1: Timetable for Privatization of Major State Enterprises[Picture]
Source: The Council for Economic Planning and Development, June 1987 data
Table 2: Major State Enterprise Already Privatized[Picture]
Note: This chart covers events from January 1, 1989 to August 30, 1997.
Source: Council for Economic Planning and Development
[Picture Caption]
China Petroleum's Kaohsiung refinery never sleeps. Unfortunately, its proud image has been marred by a series of accidents. Will privatization solve the problem?
Yangming Marine Transport, facing global competition, began seeking permission to privatize seven years ago, and completed the process early last year. The chain of decision-making has been streamlined greatly, an d performance is up. (photo courtesy of Yangming Marine Transport)
Bidding has recently been completed on the proposed high-speed railway. What will happen with Taiwan's obsolete and perennially loss-making state-run railway? Should it be privatized?
Taipower, a jewel among state firms, has for 50 years been expanding the power net across Taiwan one step at a time. It now faces an uncertain future. The photo s hows Taipower workers putting up high-voltage lines in a remote area. (photo courtesy of Taipower)
Taiwan Sugar, which grows cane, raises hogs, and more, is the largest landowner in Taiwan. It has recently moved into real-estate development.
Spurred by market liberalization and privatization, will state-run enterprises get their act together and sail into a beautiful future?
Taipower, a jewel among state firms, has for 50 years been expanding the power net across Taiwan one step at a time. It now faces an uncertain future. The photo s hows Taipower workers putting up high-voltage lines in a remote area. （photo courtesy of Taipower）
Taiwan Sugar, which grows cane, raises hogs, and more, is the largest landowner in Taiwan. It has recently moved into real-estate development.
Spurred by market liberalization and privatization, will state-run enterprises get their act together and sail into a beautiful future?
@List.jpg?w=522&h=410&mode=crop&format=webp&quality=80)