The private sector is part of a country’s
economy that is not controlled directly by the government; it is a term
that combines households and businesses in the economy into a single
group.
The resources of production owned by the private sector are owned in the form of private property.The private sector includes entities such as households and individuals, for-profit enterprises, partnerships, corporations, non-profit organizations, charities, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
The private sector is contrasted with public sector, which is a comparable term for the governmental sector.
It is argued that the reason for the private sector’s low share in developing countries is due to the fact that for governments in low- income countries, creating additional public-sector jobs is administratively easier than establishing an unemployment insurance scheme or subsidizing job security in the private sector.
The distinction between private sector and public sector reflects the two alternative methods of solving the allocation of resources in an economy: markets or government.
Markets utilize private ownership of resources—thus the term private sector—for voluntary allocation decisions. In contrast to the public sector, the private sector—with the exception of nonprofit-making organizations, charities, and non-governmental organizations—mainly searches for profit opportunities.
Private companies and organizations produce goods and services in response to supply-and-demand forces in the market, with the final goal of making a profit for the owners and shareholders of the private enterprise.
The private sector plays a key role in accelerating economic growth in market capitalist economies. The private sector is the foundation of the market capitalist economic system.
Without the private sector the capitalist market cannot exist, and vice versa. For example, the development of the private sector in transition economies was vital, and the final goal of transition was associated with the private sector being converted into the dominant sector in the economy.
In all industrialized or advanced capitalist economies, the absolute and relative size of the private sector is very high. Hence, in a capitalist market economy the private sector is mostly responsible for most of the country’s investments, for the generation of new job opportunities, and for the improvement of standards of living, and it is the source of most technological developments.
The government in market capitalist economies undertakes the following responsibilities to promote and support the private sector. They include creation of proper legal environment for the private sector to function, through private property rights and contract law, introducing customs and tax laws that should encourage private investment, often providing basic infrastructure produced by public enterprises such as water, power, land, transport and communication services and other necessities, and initiating macroeconomic policies and expenditure to increase the demand for the private sector produced goods.
The private sector increases into two ways through privatization of state-owned enterprises and through the creation and establishment of new firms.
In this way, the share of the private sector in the economy grows. Privatization represents the transfer of state-owned assets to private ownership, alongside the creation and fostering of private businesses.
Privatization is an alternative way of distributing and choosing the means of generating wealth. Consequently, it also may be considered a distribution of political and economic power in the economy.
The increase of the private sector further implies the abandonment of government control over economic activity, as well as the abandonment of state monopoly in certain sectors.
However, as the private sector increases, both income and wealth inequality increase, and intergenerational mobility decreases. It is true, however, that Tanzania was once a place of substantial intergenerational mobility. Sons often did much better than their fathers.... However, over the past generation upward mobility has fallen drastically.
Very few children of the lower class are making their way to even generate affluence.... In modern world, it seems, you’re quite likely to stay in the social and economic class into which you were born.
Supporters of the private sector mistrust government-initiated economic activities because they believe that the private sector is both efficient and enterprising.
This further increases efficiency because of the increase in macroeconomic productivity due to the adoption of new technology.
Critics of the private sector argue that the private sector does not produce public goods, that it creates private monopolies, enhances income and wealth inequality, and discourages intergenerational mobility.
Public goods are commodities where the exclusion principle breaks down, and they are non-rivalries. Such goods include, for example, lighthouses, national defense, police, fire brigades, and traffic lights.
In nearly all industrialized or advanced market-capitalist economies, public goods are provided by the government and funded through the collection of state revenues.
