Professor Thomas Sterner is interviewed in the April issue of the renowned magazine, Africa Renewal, published by the Strategic Communications Division of the United Nations Department of Public Information. "The next time the government contemplates removing the subsidy, it must be "more careful"," argues Sterner.
"You need to have a strategy, and say, ‘We are moving the money immediately. We will use it on health or education or something else’." That, Sterner says, would make it harder for the beneficiaries of the status quo to say that removing the subsidy hurts the poor.
Read the full article, entitled Bid to end subsidy stirs protest in Nigeria – Unrest highlights problems of mismanagement and corruption, online:
http://www.un.org/en/africarenewal/vol26no1/nigeria-subsidy.html
The article is also published in the print edition of Africa Renewal, April 2012, page 8.
Thomas Sterner is a Professor of Environmental Economics at the University of Gothenburg and lead author in the UN climate panel’s (IPCC) working group Mitigation of Climate Change. Sterner is also the editor of the new book Fuel Taxes and the Poor, The Distributional Effects of Gasoline Taxation and Their Implications for Climate Policy, authored by 35 renowned researchers.The 35 researchers studied data from 25 different countries to investigate the concern that petrol taxes affect poor people the most. The team included leading researchers from China, India, Indonesia, USA, Latin America, as well as many countries in Africa and Europe.