Natia Shakaia

Today I would like to talk about the engagement of the private and the public sector. However, before I begin the discussion about where and how these two important sectors can be involved, I want to review briefly what is private and public sector as such and how different they can be from each other.

The private sector employs workers through individual business owners, corporations or other NGOs. Due to the variety of businesses the positions are diverse which is a great opportunity for employees too. As for the salary, workers are paid with some percentage of the company’s profits. Well, I can definitely say that the private-sector workers tend to have more pay increases, more career choices, and greater opportunities for promotions nevertheless, there are some disadvantages as well. For example the business provided by the private sector cannot always be profitable, sometimes there can be some failures, so you are not guaranteed at all. I want to say that private sector workers are less ensured unlike from the public sector workers. If you work in the public sector you may feel yourself more comfortable and stable.

As for the public sector, typical civil positions are health care, education, construction, military services and other related posts. It can be said that public sector workers need more time and forces for promotion and moving on for higher positions.

As we see, these two sectors are quite different from each other. Although, I must admit that both of them have vital importance in the development of the country. In most cases the cooperation between public and private sectors is the most profitable for the economic development.

Nowadays there are plenty of private businesses in the world. For example the companies working on tourism issues are very successful. Agencies like this have a positive impact on the development of tourism in the countries, therefore it has a support form the government. Private sector won’t deal with business that cannot bring enough profit. Sometimes it happens that the private sector has a complete support from the government because one of the main aims of the government is to increase job opportunities for its citizens.

For example private sector can create some kind of chain that will connect the tourism company with hotels, hotels with companies producing food and so on and this whole chain creates more and more working places.

As for the public sector, generally it provides the vast amount of a nation’s infrastructure like roadways, waterways, railways and airways etc. The public sector has a huge role in the cultural development of the country. Let’s take a perfect example of my country Georgia, which had very productively fulfilled the project called “Check in Georgia”. During this project hundreds of cultural events were held countrywide. World’s famous pop (not only) artists visited Georgia such as Robby Williams, one of the most popular groups in the world Maroon 5, Christina Aguilera, Vanessa Mea and last but not least ageless group Scorpions. You will probably agree with me that this step may have only the positive impact for touristic and therefore for economic development.

In most cases the collaboration between these two sectors is very productive. I’ll take another example from my country’s one of the most wonderful and popular events ever held. “Gem-Fest” (Georgian electronic music festival) is a fresh music festival which became more successful than their owners could ever imagine.  This festival aimed at the development of tourism and the popularization of electronic music in young people. This year the project got 1.5 million GEL from the government and in the result the profit was about 20 million GEL. I must admit that this project hosted tourists from 10 different countries. That is why this is one of the best examples of the cooperation between public and private sectors.

From my personal view, the sustainable development of any country would be unimaginable without public and private sector cooperation.

Natia Shakaia

Read this article in Georgian here.

The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of the author, and can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position of ALDA and the European Union.