But certainly a major challenge in the state-owned sector is to achieve innovation.
State Enterprises Minister Laksamana Sukardi, in charge of reforming the state-owned sector, is a former banker who joined Vice President Megawati Sukarnoputri's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) in the early 1990s, when it was hardly politically expedient to do so.
It needs to create new jobs for the millions employed in state-owned enterprises and the farming sector whose jobs will become redundant after China joins the World Trade Organization.
Average private earnings rose by just 0.2% in the year to December (in the public sector, excluding state-owned banks, pay went up by 2.4%).
Indeed, the Vice President, John Mahama, has been complaining persistently about "excessive bureaucracy and red-tapeism in the public sector" in the state-owned Daily Graphic.
The decision has cautioned consternation in Brazil and Argentina, whose energy firms - such as state-owned Petrobras - have major stakes in the Bolivian gas sector.
The existence of widespread shadow banking serving the private sector, however, indicates that state-owned enterprises have much easier access to credit.
While ICBC has consistently been the most-profitable big state-owned Chinese bank in recent years, the country's entire banking sector is grappling with slowing profit growth and a potential for more bad loans.
To the European competition authorities, it is arguing that the closure of private-sector nuclear plants unfairly boosts the dominant market position of the state-owned utility, Vattenfall.
State-owned banks still dominate the financial sector and are kept profitable by a positive spread between loan and deposit rates dictated by government policy.
Moscow's flexing of its muscles in the energy sector - which saw state-owned firm Gazprom temporarily cut off gas supplies to neighbouring Ukraine - as well as new rules for the foreign ownership of Russian companies and export tax rises, all have implications for BP.
The Russian energy sector remains, however, substantially state-owned.
There are 31 state-owned Global 2000 firms versus 25 from the private sector.
Some lawmakers are calling for an inquiry into the oil sector, in particular the running of the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, widely perceived as the home of some of Nigeria's most explosive scandals - and the source of gigantic sums of money.
In February, the heads of China's three state-controlled oil and gas majors -- China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), Sinopec and China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC) -- met one of Russia's most influential players in the energy sector, Igor Sechin, chief executive of state-owned oil company Rosneft.
Slovenia's mostly state-owned banking sector is suffering from mounting bad debts and the government has struggled to borrow money.
BBC: Slovenia unveils reforms as it seeks to avoid EU bailout
The official PMI is generally seen as reflective of state-owned companies, while the HSBC version is a better proxy for the private sector.
Deregulation of the financial sector would open up opportunities currently ignored in a marketplace dominated by large state-owned banks.
Like much of China's banking sector, the two have struggled under the weight of bad debts made to state-owned firms.
The importance of such human investment is also dawning on an unlikely business sector: China's threadbare state-owned enterprises.
It needs the export sector to continue booming, in order to absorb surplus labour from the countryside and moribund state-owned companies.
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