"Post-Privatization Industrial Restructuring Issues in Economies in
Transition (EIT) and Developing Countries"

Tulane Institute for International Development (TIID) invites you to its
November Seminar under the Tulane International Development 2000 Seminar Series.

Speaker: Mr. Kenneth Abeywickrama

To hear the introduction by Dr. Samarasinghe click here.

To read Dr. Abeywickrama notes on this topic click here.

To view and hear this presentation click here.

Privatization was a cornerstone of the liberal economic reforms that were to uplift the ex-socialist economies and the developing countries to become a part of the more prosperous global economy. Despite structural adjustment, the results have been disappointing and post-privatization industrial restructuring is now a major area of international aid agency work, together with further emphasis on the liberalization and reform of the economies. The outlook for many of these countries is still uncertain. Of the EIT, only three had reached their 1988 GDP levels by 1989. Several LDCs have actually seen per capita GDP levels sink below 1960 levels. China, which did not follow the orthodox prescriptions, has grown at a faster rate than any other country in recent times. It is now time to re-examine orthodoxy and take account of the global economic changes that have affected every country and impacted on industrial production in developing countries and EIT: the dominance of TNCs, regional preferential trade zones, flows of FDI, volatile flows of currency and short term lending, barriers to international trade, declining terms of trade for developing countries, etc. Economic deprivation and instability leads to poor governance, corruption, capital flight, short-term corporate objectives, leading to further industrial decline. The debates involve the creation of an enabling environment for weaker players in the global economy while fine tuning the traditional remedies.

~~~~~About the Speaker~~~~~

Kenneth Abeywickrama is an international management consultant on privatization and enterprise restructuring. He has worked for the World Bank, USAID, and International Trade Center (UNCTAD/WTO) and for the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, often as team leader of multi-disciplinary teams of international experts. He has experience in a variety of countries including Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Lesotho, Sri Lanka, Mongolia, Bosnia and Albania, China, Colombia, Bolivia, Brazil, Nigeria and India.

Mr. Abeywickrama graduated from the University of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1958. Before he became an international management consultant he served in a variety of senior positions in his home country. He was the Head of Marketing of Unilever (Ceylon) Ltd. the country's largest consumer products company. He also functioned as the Chairman-Managing Director of a large ailing state enterprise, the State Timber Corporation of Sri Lanka. He is credited with having successfully turned around the Corporation to a profit making enterprise. It is one of the case studies analyzed by Professor James Austin of the Harvard Business School in his book Strategic Management in Developing Countries (Free Press of McMillan, 1990).  It was also highlighted in the California Management Review (Spring 1986) and the Asian Wall Street Journal (Sept. 22 and 28, 1981).