The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Wednesday warned against blanket subsidies, saying targeted support for vulnerable and poor people provides better results.

Rodrigo Valdés, Director of the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department, spoke during a press briefing on the fund’s fiscal monitor at the 2026 annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank in Bangkok, Thailand.

The fund said that, beyond being expensive, blanket petrol subsidies often benefit higher-income consumers disproportionately and could worsen fiscal pressures amid rising debt and borrowing costs.

“Protecting people is not the same as protecting the price of fuels,” Mr Valdés said.

“It’s first fiscally very costly, and second, if you look at the pattern of consumption, it’s easy to see that that subsidy is readily regressive in many places.”

Mr Valdes spoke in response to a question on how the IMF could recommend energy prices to reflect scarcity when higher fuel prices in Nigeria and some other countries have led to higher cost of living, increased transport costs, worsening inflation, and poverty.

The IMF official said fuel subsidies or measures preventing prices from adjusting fully to an energy shock had cost countries between 1 per cent and 1.5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2026.

He called on governments across the world to instead use social safety nets and household data to identify people who need assistance.

“There are better tools to deal with this,” he said.

The fund’s intervention is in line with its long-standing position on subsidy, as recently canvassed in a recent report.

“Targeted and temporary transfers are the most effective and cost-efficient way to protect poorer households when prices for basics spike,” fund said in its report.

“This approach directly supports those who need it most, preserves scarce fiscal space, and allows high market prices to continue signalling scarcity, encouraging consumers to reduce consumption if they can.”

READ ALSO: Targeted support, not subsidies, can best protect people when inflation surges IMF

Local Debates

Debates over the propriety of fuel subsidy has been at the centre of discussions in Nigeria in recent weeks, ahead of a crucial election slated for January.

While the Nigerian government, led by President Bola Tinubu, has defended its economic policy of subsidy removal as critical to the nation’s fiscal survival, opposition politicians—such as Atiku Abubakar of the ADC and Peter Obi of the NDC—have canvassed for and promised a return to different subsidy arrangements if elected into power.

The U.S. Department of Justice is warning that hackers working for the North Korean regime are increasingly relying on Americans to facilitate the hacking of U.S. companies.

In an announcement on Tuesday, prosecutors said they have indicted and arrested at least two people, and conducted searches across dozens of suspected “laptop farms” in Texas. The computers were allegedly used by North Koreans to remotely hack into American companies and steal sensitive data.

According to the DOJ, federal authorities seized over 180 computers that they believe American companies had shipped out to their newly hired employees, not realizing that they were sanctioned North Korean spies who had used stolen identities of U.S. citizens to gain employment. The DOJ said that it raided over 40 laptop farms across Texas, the largest disclosed number of homes and residences used for facilitating North Korean hacks, which were owned by at least two American facilitators.

CrowdStrike, which helped the FBI investigate and disrupt the latest North Korean operations, said that laptop farms are “vital” to North Korea in helping its hackers overcome physical, financial, and legal challenges of not physically being in the United States.

The prosecutors said at least 70 U.S.-based companies had been infiltrated by the hackers, who are believed to have generated around $3 million in stolen funds. The DOJ did not name the affected companies, but described them as healthcare, cyber support, retail, communications, and manufacturing sectors across Ohio and 16 other states, including the District of Columbia.

“Increasingly, North Korean IT workers are turning to recruiting American facilitators to counter improved private sector detections and law enforcement actions. These workers are hiring facilitators to complete a wider variety of tasks, and in some cases subcontracting entire jobs to third-party foreign nationals,” the Justice Department said. 

Oftentimes, North Korean hackers use real-looking email addresses, spoofed LinkedIn profiles, and extensive online and social media accounts as cover for their activities.

In a separate public service announcement, the FBI said that there are “thousands” of North Korean-state controlled IT workers working at Western companies, which “pose a significant national security and intellectual property theft insider threat.”

This is the latest wave of arrests, indictments, and enforcement action targeting North Korean activities in the United States in recent years. The breakaway regime has used this “remote IT workers” scheme to allow North Koreans to gain employment with U.S. and European companies, earn a wage, and then steal sensitive information and intellectual property while as employees. The victim companies are then extorted into paying the hackers further. 

The remote IT workers’ scheme is one of several strands of illicit revenue that the North Korean regime aims to generate, including hacking crypto exchanges and open-source developer projects, with the aim of funding its internationally sanctioned nuclear weapons program. The regime is thought to have stolen at least $2 billion in crypto during 2025 alone.

Experts on North Korea have put the number of hacked companies and the amount of stolen crypto as likely much higher than reported.

Earlier this year, CrowdStrike said in a separate report that North Korean hackers were behind around half of all documented “hands-on-keyboard” intrusions over the past year, referring to hacks that are carried out by humans and not automated tools or AI.