Private vs public interests in shipyards

The editorial on the Shipyards' privatisation (June 11) made interesting reading. It seems that by parcelling up the privatisation of this, over the years, heavily state subsidised entity, the lucrative parts are finding a ready buyer while the cumbersome part with docks and ship repair facility, the largest heavy duty facility on the island, will either go for a song, be auctioned off and scaled down or remain fallow. Anyone following maritime journals will realise that now is the worst time possible to try and privatise a ship repair facility when so many have decreasing order books.

According to my reading of Adam Smith the state's function is to do what the private citizen or corporations will or cannot do for the common good. Thus, seeing that so much of our taxes over decades have been sunk into the ship repair yard, would it make economic and political sense to auction off parts of it and leave the rest out of commission? In too many cases private interests have strong lobbying powers to obtain public assets on the cheap while reinvesting back as little as they can get away with - just look at the deteriorating Fort Chambray in Gozo!