The public sector, sometimes referred to as the state sector or the government sector, is a part of the state that deals with either the production, ownership, sale, provision, delivery and allocation of goods and services by and for the government or its citizens, whether national, regional or local/municipal.
Examples of public sector activity range from delivering social security, administering urban planning and organizing national defense.
In spite of their name, public companies are not part of the public sector; they are a particular kind of private sector company that can offer their shares for sale to the general public, i.e. to anyone willing to buy them (as opposed to a privately owned company, shares of which can be sold to someone only if the owner of the shares agrees to sell them).
