Posts tagged subsidies

Subsidies for fossil fuels amount to $1,000 (£640) a year for every citizen living in the G20 group of the world’s leading economies, despite the group’s pledge in 2009 to phase out support for coal, oil and gas. New figures from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) show that the US, which hosted the G20 summit in 2009, gives $700bn a year in fossil fuel subsidies, equivalent to $2,180 for every American. President Barack Obama backed the phase out but has since overseen a steep rise in federal fossil fuel subsidies.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/aug/04/g20-countries-pay-over–1000-per-citizen-in-fossil-fuel-subsidies-say-imf

Fossil fuel companies are benefitting from global subsidies of $5.3tn (£3.4tn) a year, equivalent to $10m a minute every day, according to a startling new estimate by the International Monetary Fund. The IMF calls the revelation “shocking” and says the figure is an “extremely robust” estimate of the true cost of fossil fuels. The $5.3tn subsidy estimated for 2015 is greater than the total health spending of all the world’s governments.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/18/fossil-fuel-companies-getting–10m-a-minute-in-subsidies-says-imf?CMP=share_btn_tw

A gang of Romanian Farmville-like enthusiasts insist they never realized that the government funds given for farming are actually for real animals and not fake ones like those on Facebook, deciding that their imaginary cows deserve the same treatment as the other milk-giving animals. In other words, they ripped off authorities using one of the oldest scams in the book, made possible by bureaucracy. The gang claimed they held eight cow farms with a total of 1,860 animals and received subsidies of almost $163 (€120) per cow for three years.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Farmville-Gang-Cons-Romanian-Government-for–681–000–500–000-Virtual-Cows-Funds–406162.shtml