We Ask Your Government! How Much its Fossil-Fuel Subsidies Cost

Abstract

In 2010, the International Budget Partnership (IBP) began a project to find out how well governments respond to legitimate requests from civil society for information on specific areas of public expenditure. The Ask Your Government! (AYG) How Much it is Spending on Development Commitments initiative posed six budget-related questions to 80 governments. The Global Subsidies Initiative (GSI) of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) developed one of those questions: “What was the total amount actually incurred during the past three fiscal years on subsidies for oil, gas and coal production and consumption?”The results illustrate the opacity of fossil-fuel subsidy policies and the lack of information about how governments are spending public money. This brief analyses the findings of the survey and provides insightful anecdotes from the surveyors that demonstrate the challenges of accessing information on subsidy expenditure – some researchers received angry phone calls from Ministers’ offices demanding why they wanted the information, others were told that the information is ‘private’ or ‘politically sensitive’ and officials did not want to ‘expose themselves’, and some researchers were given the run-around between ministries, one submitted up to 15 requests before giving up. The brief concludes with recommendations for how policy-makers can improve the availability and quality of information about subsidies.