The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) commends the governments of Indonesia and Italy on the release of their fossil fuel subsidy peer review results.

The Italian report includes 39 subsidies to production and consumption totalling EUR 13 billion in 2016. The Indonesian report highlights significant past reforms to transport fuels and electricity.

Both countries agree there is more work to do. Indonesia speaks in its report about efforts to reform liquified petroleum gas (LPG) subsidies and acknowledges more can be done in electricity. With a new medium-term development plan that references subsidy reform, we are eager to see how they move forward.

Italy, with a new government at the time of the review, asked its advisory panel to provide suggestions for reform and conduct CGE modelling on various reform scenarios to inform their plans. Both requests were welcome, and we look forward to seeing how they inspire Italy’s actions.

IISD thanks both countries for inviting our Global Subsidies Initiative team to be part of the review process. “This was an honour we take very seriously,” says Peter Wooders, Energy Group Director for IISD. “We now call on Canada and Argentina as the next G20 countries scheduled for peer review to continue raising the bar on transparency - government support for the oil, gas and coal sectors must be clear. We note a majority of G20 countries have yet to embark on  reviews and repeat our call for them to commit to voluntary peer reviews of fossil fuel subsidies.”