In addition to the other excellent answers, one piece of the puzzle is that back in the 1980ies, privatization meant local businesses or at least local branches of nationals or internationals. Offices would be built or rented, people employed, the whole snowball effect.

Contrast this with today's digital services: if Uber gets rich providing hailing intermediation, all that wealth goes straight to the headquarter, with the local economy getting nothing besides the drivers' share which Uber will inevitably push down to subsistence level. Local inefficiency on the other hand would at least keep the money circulating locally.