This is the latest announcement, and probably the most impressive. In early January, the Cuban government said it planned to increase the price of fuel by 500%. The Caribbean island, whose government says it has the cheapest gasoline in the world, has joined twenty countries, from Sri Lanka to Nigeria via Tunisia, Malaysia, Ghana and Ivory Coast, which remove or promise to remove fuel subsidies. A movement ” probably among the most substantial » Of the history, “if not the most substantial”, estimates a spokesperson for the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Brutal in Cuba, the increase in prices at the pump appears gradual elsewhere, such as in Senegal, where the authorities raised them for the first time in 2023, promising new increases by 2025.
On the Corniche of Dakar, the central artery of a capital partly stuck on a peninsula and whose traffic jams are proverbial, Alhussein Mamaduli has just filled the tank of his scooter, on which sits a stack of newspapers. The 27-year-old man – face covered with a mask to protect himself as best he can from pollution and Sahelian dust – delivers them every morning to companies. “Every day, I have to buy 4,000 CFA francs [6 euros] of gasoline, otherwise the motorcycle does not move. It’s too much, too expensive”, he laments. His activity earns him barely more. Asked about future increases, he gets annoyed, pointing to the Atlantic Ocean which extends in front of the cornice: “We will then leave on the boats, because there is not enough money here. » Senegal is experiencing a resurgence of migrant departures to the Spanish Canary Islands: deadly crossings, motivated by the lack of jobs but also by the cost of living.
If, like Dakar, many capitals end up taking such a sensitive and unpopular measure, it is because they are caught by the throat. In 2022, direct fuel subsidies reached a peak globally: nearly $1.3 trillion (€1.2 trillion), according to the IMF. That is to say a tripling compared to the 450 billion estimated in 2020.
Across the globe, 85% of states, rich and poor, Asian or European as well as African, apply a direct rebate at the pump, according to the Washington-based institution. In the lead, we find China (266 billion dollars in 2022), followed among others by Saudi Arabia (129), Indonesia (72) and Algeria (45). But the burden that these subsidies represent on public finances varies greatly from one state to another. For world power China, for example, this $266 billion totals approximately 1% of GDP. For Angola, an oil producer where a third of residents live in extreme poverty, aid has doubled to $6 billion to reach 6% of the country’s overall output. This is almost three times the spending on education, according to the World Bank.
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