Fuel subsidies and sustainable development: further resources.

International Fuel Prices

International Fuel Prices, edited by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), are available for download at http://www.gtz.de/en/themen/29957.htm

World Energy Outlook

The World Energy Outlook, an annual publication of the International Energy Agency, produces medium to long-term energy market projections and analysis. The most recent edition, covering 2006, estimates that energy consumption subsidies in non-OECD countries amount to over $250 Billion USD per year. WEO 2006 notes that "real prices paid by most energy consumers have increased far less than international prices in percentage terms, because of the cushioning effect of taxes and distribution margins and, in some countries, subsidies and a fall in the value in the dollar." WEO 2006 is available for purchase at: http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/

International Monetary Fund on the Magnitude and Distribution of Fuel Subsidies

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) published a paper last November that found fuel subsidies to be badly targeted in five of the countries it examined (IMF Working Paper: The Magnitude and Distribution of Fuel Subsidies: Evidence from Bolivia, Ghana, Jordan, Mali, and Sri Lanka). It concluded that in many cases, poor people would be better served by more targeted forms of support than fuel subsidies. "By far the most efficient and effective way to protect the poor is to allocate some of the budgetary savings from the elimination of fuel subsidies to a well-targeted social safety net that has high coverage of poor households and little leakage to nonpoor households," states the IMF paper. The paper is available for download at: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2006/wp06247.pdf