DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Sept. 5 (UPI) -- Iraq needs to stop subsidizing its fuels but step up quality of life services to citizens, a top government adviser said.

Kamal Field al-Basri, senior economic adviser to Maliki and executive director of the Iraq Institute for Economic Reform, told UPI on the sidelines of an Iraq energy summit that fuel subsidies are too subjective to benefit the entire country.

Fuels subsidies are “not distributed equally, they benefit only those who have a car, not the poor,” Basri said at the Iraq Oil, Gas, Petrochemical and Electricity Summit organized by the London-Based Iraq Development Program.

He said the funds dedicated to subsidizing fuels could be best used in other sectors “that can improve the standard of living … hospitals and things like that.”

“In 2005 the total value of the subsidies that the government gives to fuels amounted to $809 billion, which is a huge amount,” he said, adding it would be a strike against the growing fuels black market. “That explains why we have smuggling of fuel to neighboring countries. The government is committed to reform on these issues.”