Resources

The non-profit International Budget Project (IBP) has published a citizen's guide to monitoring government expenditure. The guide walks readers through the overall budget process, explaining how and why there can be differences between a government budget and actual expenditure. It also highlights stages in which civil society can monitor government expenditure, including budget execution, procurement, and legislative oversight processes.

State economic development spending in North Carolina is analyzed in a new report by a Washington-based think tank. North Carolina recently released a so-called Economic Development Inventory (EDI), which identifies state spending on economic development. The report, by the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED), expands on the EDI's analysis, and suggests how investment incentives could be better spent.

A comprehensive report on trends in world agriculture by two leading inter-governmental organizations arrives at a time when prices for almost all agricultural outputs are at records highs.

The Energy Information Administration (EIA), a statistical and analytical arm of the U.S. Department of Energy, has released it latest report on subsidies to the energy sector, covering the 2007 fiscal year. Total energy-specific subsidies and support to all energy forms are estimated at US$ 16 billion for 2007: about double the amount estimated in 1999 by the EIA.

A new report released by the Buenos Aires-based NGO Asociación Argentina de Presupuesto y Administración Financiera Pública (ASAP) reveals that Argentinean government subsidies have skyrocketed during the first trimester of 2008.

On World Malaria Day (25 April), the United Nations Secretary General posited a vision of halting malaria deaths by ensuring that effective control measures be available to everyone by the end of 2010. The interventions are, broadly, prevention with long-lasting insecticidal bed nets; spraying interior walls of dwellings with insecticides; and treatment with effective drugs.

There are signs aplenty in rural Asia of the profligate use of energy - electrical and fossil fuel - but little evidence that such use is being assessed against its true costs. This is because supplying cheap power (and in some cases free power) is a valuable political lever. In rural Asia, the value of such 'support' can be judged by the scale of popular opposition to its withdrawal.

Agricultural is the leading consumptive user of water, accounting for between 70 to 90 percent of the total water used in developing countries and more than one third of the water consumed in many OECD countries.

When the world's richest Indian, Lakshmi Mittal, recently visited Kolkata, the city of his youth, he was thrilled to see change. Mittal told the media that the biggest difference he saw was the many flyovers dotting the city skyline and "disciplined traffic". This is great progress, he told journalists, who promptly reported that the tycoon had given the city's road and traffic management a big thumbs up.

A report from the Global Development and Environment Institute of Tufts University argues that one of the major beneficiaries from recent changes to U.S. farm policy has been the industrialized livestock sector. The study comes at a time when rising commodity prices, due in part to demand for biofuels, has drawn complaints from livestock producers.