Global Landscape of Subsidy Measures

Our understanding of subsidies remains uneven and incomplete. There are important gaps in our knowledge of subsidy practices; while information for some sectors is relatively developed, in others it remains at an earlier stage. At the global level, we have a better picture of the number of subsidy measures than of their relative size or importance, but numerical counts can be misleading—for example, when one country reports many small subsidy measures, while another reports only one (very large) aggregate program. The picture is also affected by the uneven transparency of subsidy measures across sectors and countries. Drawing on the available information, this section sets out what we know—and don’t know—about the use of subsidies.