Publication: Government Response to Oil Price Volatility : Experience of 49 Developing Countries
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2009-07
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2014-05-09
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Oil prices rose from 2004 to historic highs in mid-2008, only to fall precipitously in the last four months of 2008 and lose all the gains of the preceding four and a half years. The steep price increase from January 2007 to July 2008 was challenging for all economies. While the sharp drop in prices since August 2008 has been welcome news for consumers, the cause of it, the global financial crisis, is not. Moreover, currency depreciation against the dollar in many developing countries has meant that, in local currency units, petroleum product prices have not fallen as sharply as in U.S. dollars. This report examines the policy responses of 49 developing country governments to world oil price movements in the last three years. The sample includes 16 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, 15 in Asia, 10 in Latin America, and 8 in the Middle East and North Africa. The report updates a companion 2006 publication on coping with higher oil prices and builds upon two other publications: one on oil price volatility and another on the degree of pass-through of world oil price increases between January 2004 and August 2009. As with all other publications in this series, this report examines issues related to oil price levels and volatility in the downstream petroleum sector and other sectors where oil is an important input, such as transport, fisheries, and agriculture, from the point of view of consumers. It does not consider macro-level policies (such as monetary or exchange rate policy) or the impact of oil price changes on the macroeconomic performance of countries, nor does it discuss management of the windfall income by large oil exporters and the long-term economic consequences of revenue management.
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“Kojima, Masami. 2009. Government Response to Oil Price Volatility : Experience of 49 Developing Countries. Extractive industries and development series;no. 10. © http://hdl.handle.net/10986/18234 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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