From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishprivatizepri‧vat‧ize (also privatise British English) /ˈpraɪvətaɪz/ verb [transitive] PEBBif a government privatizes an organization, industry, or service that it owns or controls, it sells it → nationalize→ See Verb table
Examples from the Corpus
privatize• Over the years, he cut costs by privatizing a big portion of each service.• Employees of the Strathtay bus company, which has been privatized, are concerned that drivers are about to be made redundant.• The company was privatized by the government in 1987.• Hungary has been very keen to privatize its major industries, following the democratic reforms of 1988.• Boris Yeltsin and his team wanted to privatize land after toppling the Soviet system.• Chiluba pledged to reduce spending on the security forces and to privatize loss-making parastatal organizations.• Third, it is time to privatize Pemex, the inefficient state oil company.• It has suggested privatizing Snecma, which makes aeroengines.• Another proposal suggests privatizing some aspects of local prisons.• Gazing into our crystal ball, we see Scott breaking her campaign promise to not privatize Tucson Water.From Longman Business Dictionaryprivatizepri‧vat‧ize /ˈpraɪvətaɪz/ (also privatise British English) verb [transitive]ECONOMICS if the government privatizes a company or activity that it owns or operates, it sells the company etc to a business or to members of the public, who become its new SHAREHOLDERsthe Argentine government’s drive to privatize a number of businessesWhen it privatized agriculture, Vietnam went from rice-importer to exporter in one growing season. → compare nationalize —privatized (also privatised British English) adjectivethe privatised gas industry→ See Verb table 