Impacts of privatization on electricity markets: Implementations in the World and Turkey

Privatization activities that can be accomodated to all sectors have been continuing to be implemented in electricity sector regulated by restructuring programs, for years. Privatization is not only practiced by the transfer of assets that belongs to the public to the private sector, but also it can be practiced by private sector?s investing from scratch in the market. Thus, it is aimed to rise the share of private sector in market. In electricity markets both the sales of assets that belong to the public and opening the market to private sector are being practiced simultanously. Yet, some regulations should be implemented in electricity sector which has the most properties of a natural monopoly. Because, when the privatization, whose essential objective is reducing production costs and prices without sacrificing the quality, shuts off from regulation in natural monopoly, the firm(s) in the market could manipulate its market power easily. In this study, it has been tried to make a detailed examination as much as possible concerning the method and result of privatization in electricity sector. In order to be put forth the privatization practices more understandable, firstly the concept of privatization, the theory of natural monopoly, and the methods of regulations have been discussed. After that, these three have been immingled and results of electricity privatization have been examined by illustrated by the cases of countries that have been chosen and last the case of Turkey. Keywords 1.Privatization 2.Electricity sector 3.Public assets 4.Private sector 5.Investment 6.Natural monopoly 7.Regulation 8.Chosen countries 9.Turkey