Although politically attractive in the short-term, across-the-board subsidies come at huge fiscal and economic costs (Ravallion 2009, Grosh et al. They are difficult to reverse and are most often regressive, i.e. they distribute relatively more resources to the non-poor than to the poor. Scaling-up existing cash transfer schemes is easier than installing a programme from scratch. The ability to respond quickly depends on the quality of the existing programmes (Mitra et al.