 Evaluating Thailand's Free Basic Electricity ProgramWichsinee Wibulpolprasert, Bhawin Teveyanun and Tanyathorn Osataphan No 87, PIER Discussion Papers from Puey Ungphakorn Institute for Economic Research Abstract: This study evaluates the performance of Thailand's Free Basic Electricity (FBE) program along three dimensions: targeting effectiveness, benefit adequacy, and subsidy burden distribution. While the FBE benefits reaches the targeted population (low-income families) quite well, the benefit leakage to the non-targeted population could result in a significant increase in the overall subsidy cost. Furthermore, the current 50-unit free quota given by the FBE program is insufficient for the basic need of many low-income families. Lastly, the FBE subsidy burden falls exclusively on the industrial/commercial customers, but the cost increase has been rather small. Therefore, Thailand's FBE program can be markedly improved by introducing a more effective targeting approach to reduce leakage, which will allow the government to raise the free electricity quota while maintaining the same overall subsidy cost. Keywords: Free Electricity; Electricity Subsidy; Subsidy Targeting (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pui:dpaper:87 Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from Access Statistics for this paper More papers in PIER Discussion Papers from Puey Ungphakorn Institute for Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC. |
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