Performance of state owned electric utilities : case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia and Croatia

Abstract

One of the biggest questions battling governments is performance of Electric Utilities, as they are one of the biggest resources and largest State Owned Enterprises. This issue became more important as electricity market has been liberalized and fully opened. Before market liberalization state owned Electric Utilities operated in monopoly market where competition was not possible. Therefore, due to market liberalisation existing companies have to be more competitive than before in order to grow and survive new competition from EU countries. Paper analyses performance of State Owned Electric Utilities from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia and Croatia. Measuring the success of the State Owned Electric Utilities is based on the analysis of financial statements for period from 2008 to 2012, using indicators of profitability. Electricity market in Slovenia and Croatia have been fully opened in analyzed period while electricity market in Bosnia has been closed. The results reveal that State Owned Electric Utilities operating in opened market have better performance and are more competitive than State Owned Electric Utilities which operate in closed market. The broad conclusion that emerges from the results is that market opening and new competition entering markets has pushed companies to improve their governance practices and performance in order to survive on the market.