The Myanmar government is making arrangements to privatize four state enterprises under the Ministry of Transport involving the domestic airline, domestic water transport, port handling and shipyard, local media reported Sunday.

The transformation of these state enterprises to public enterprises will start in the next fiscal year of 2012-13 (April- March), the Internal Water Transport Department was quoted by the Flower News as saying.

The privatized enterprises will involve stakes of the government and the private sector, it said.

Meanwhile, under an urban rail transport privatization program, the Yangon city circular train business is to be taken over by eight ethnic private companies under the build-operate-transfer system.

A total of 93 private entrepreneurs bid for operating the rail transport business which has been undertaken by the government for over eight decades since 1926.

Moreover, previous office buildings of some Myanmar ministries, left behind in Yangon after the administrative capital was moved to Nay Pyi Taw in late 2005, are also being privatized.

These include ministries of foreign Affairs, energy, hotels and tourism, immigration and population, and commerce.

In a bid to turn the state-owned enterprises into more effective ones under its market-oriented economic policy, Myanmar introduced the privatization plan in 1995 which has been implemented through auctioning and leasing or establishing joint ventures with local and foreign investors.

The privatization plan covering those enterprises nationalized in the 1960s was introduced in a bid to systematically turn them into more effective enterprises, according to the government- formed Privatization Commission.