Oil Revenue Assignments: Country Experiences and Issues

Eric Mottu and Ehtisham Ahmad

No 2002/203, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: Based on country experiences, the paper assesses policy options to assign oil revenues to subnational governments (SNGs). The literature recommends that oil revenues be centralized. Given political economy considerations, this paper suggests that a possible alternative is to assign stable oil-tax bases to oil-producing SNGs, supplementing these with predictable transfers from the center. Although commonly used, oil revenue-sharing arrangements are the least preferable solution, as they complicate macroeconomic management and do not provide stable financing. Revenue sharing also does not diffuse separatist tendencies, since oil-producing SNGs would still be better off by keeping their oil revenues in full.

Keywords: WP; oil revenue; national government; natural resource; federal government; income tax; tax assignment; revenue sharing; oil-producing countries; Canada; Colombia; Indonesia; Mexico; Nigeria; Russia; United Arab Emirates; United States; Venezuela; oil-producing state; oil-revenue fluctuation; revenue base; gas revenue; gas-revenue share; federation revenue; small nation; Oil; gas and mining taxes; Natural resources; Subnational tax; North America (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26
Date: 2002-11-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=16126 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2002/203

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/pubs/ord_info.htm

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Akshay Modi ().