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Foreword -- Executive summary -- 1. Introduction, background, and methodology -- 2. Getting the conditions right -- 3. Getting the market structure right -- 4. Private sector participation -- 5. Social safety net issues -- 6. Conclusions and recommendations -- Case studies: Georgia -- Hungary -- Kazakhstan -- Kyrgyz Republic -- Lithuania -- Moldova -- Poland -- Tajikistan -- Turkey -- Ukraine -- Bibliography

The Californian power crisis appears to have greatly rekindled the latent doubts on moving to more competitive market structures for such an essential service as electricity. The recent collapse of Enron and several other industrial giants, as well as doubts about the reliability of external audits (resulting, in particular, in the collapse of Arthur Anderson) and the slide in the stock values of AES and other companies has eroded the confidence in the institutional pillars of the market, such as corporate disclosure, external audit, and oversight by regulators and Security Exchange Commissions. Major energy investors, at least in North America, seem to be anxious to clean up their balance sheets to eliminate from their portfolio unprofitable and risky investments. Against this backdrop, the objective of this study is to review the experiences in the ECA region1 in the 1990s in relation to the private sector participation in the power sector and draw possible lessons and to identify the approaches that enable successful privatization of the power sector and securing optimal privatization receipts. Brief case studies for 10 countries, essentially based on a desk review of the Bank ' s available records, were prepared, and information on a few other countries was collected.