International Journal of Development and Economic Sustainability Vol.6, No.1, pp. 19-28, February 2018 ___Published by European Centre for Research Training and Development UK (www.eajournals.org) 19 ISSN 2055-608X(Print), ISSN 2055-6098(Online) DETERMINANTS OF THE TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY PERFORMANCE OF PRIVATIZED MANUFACTURING FIRMS IN NIGERIA: AN ECONOMETRIC ANALYSIS Chris AC-Ogbonna, Ph.D Department of Economics, Veritas University, Abuja, (The Catholic University of Nigeria) ABSTRACT: This work is designed to empirically evaluate the determinants of the technical efficiency of ten privatized manufacturing firms in Nigeria. The firms were selected from the numerous firms in the four geo political zones to represent the interest of the entire country due to their age long establishment, size and government equity investment in them. The study adopted Data envelopment analysis (DEA) and ordinary least square regression as the techniques of analysis and the period of analysis is five years before and five years after privatization. The efficiency scores generated from the first stage using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) was used as dependent variables in the second stage against a set of explanatory variables. The investigation revealed that concentration ratio, size and age of firms were considered as determinant of technically efficiency. It also shows that, concentration ratio will lead to higher monopoly power, with age firms gain experience and with size, firms gain more strength to control or have a larger share of the market. It is recommended that there should be market competition with liberalization of entry conditions, in order to terminate monopoly and allow for new entrants to make operations competitive for production. This will be in line with the industrialization policy. KEYWORDS: Determinants, Technical efficiency, Privatized Manufacturing firms, Nigeria INTRODUCTION The historical background of Privatization dated back to 1970 when the Nigerian economy began to experience economic depression. The adverse impact of this Economic crisis became monumental in the early part of 1980, as the nation witnessed a dramatic decline in economic performance. The Size of the public firms which grew too large constituted an impediment to the development of the less-developing countries especially in Nigeria. Towards the tail end of 1980s, the public firms began to experience fundamental problems of low capacity utilization, corruption, defective capital structures, bureaucratic excesses, internal crises, lack of modern production technology, inadequate working capital, poor management and lack of technical support and of all the 42 public firms investigated, only 6 (14.2per cent) recorded capacity utilization of about 50 per cent (Owosekun, 1991; World Bank, 1996). In 1981, the Nigerian economy went into recession (an economic crisis marked by falling oil revenue, declining industrial output which was reflected in the inability of the Nigerian economy to finance imports, a weak agricultural sector, trade arrears worth billions of dollars and a stalement in talks to reschedule the countries crippling external debt) until recently when the debts were settled and the remaining percentage written off by the Paris Club of creditors. Subsequently in1985, profit losses went up from N96.44 million to about N3.7 billion in 1990’sand was also reported that the amount of the joint investment in these parastatals was