In today’s Israel being known as a government-company is no longer a matter of great pride, so they try to hide it. Egged claims they are a private company, so does Bezeq, and so do others. They would rather you don’t take back your tax money, by claiming their pens, chairs, tissues, etc.
But how can you tell who’s lying?
Here’s one simple method: Start typing their name into the fields on this page (the government ombudsman), select the various auto-complete options and press “Next”. As you will see, some partitions of Egged are private (sort of), while Bezeq and others are “only” heavily regulated in fascistic public-private-partnerships.