Subsidised services

Subsidized animal health services

Government veterinary services are generally subsidized. Donors (e.g. IMF, World Bank) are trying to restrict the range of subsidized services to cut costs. Services which primarily benefit the animal owner (‘private good services’) are supposed to be handed over to the private sector, while government can continue to pay for services which primarily benefit the country (‘public good services’). Payment by government to the private sector for performing public good services can, to a certain extent, continue to subsidize private good work.

Directly subsidized government veterinary services remain in place in some parts of western Europe, for example in the Highlands and Islands Scheme in Scotland, and for the same political reasons that many aid recipient countries are trying to resist having to privatize all their veterinary services. These reasons can include maintaining the viability of rural communities, or levelling costs across the country to make services equally accessible to the whole population.