India, June 26 -- Subsidies are often part of public policy but in several cases can be used for helping vested interests and often result in misallocation of resources. A recent report clearly shows the major distortions that exist at the global level in respect of subsidies on fossil fuels. As it happens, these, in the case of the US, turn out to be 10 times more than the expenditure on education.

The recent publication referred to shows that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that $5.2 trillion was spent globally on fossil fuel subsidies in 2017. This represents the equivalent of 6.5 per cent of the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in that particular year, representing half a trillion increase since 2015, when apparent...