The phrase "in-kind" means provided in a form other than money. Typical in-kind benefits provided by governments are subsidized housing, specific infrastructure (like a road servicing a single mine or factory), the services required to maintain that infrastructure, and various services to help exporters. They may be considered subsidies if they involve expenditure (or foregone revenue) by a government and they confer a specific benefit on the recipient. However, government provision of general infrastructure - e.g., highways and ports - is often excluded from the definition of an in-kind subsidy, as is the case in the WTO's general agreement on subsidies, the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures.
The value of an in-kind benefit depends on the price charged for the resource, good or service. When a government undercharges for something, the unit subsidy is usually considered equal to the difference between the price paid and the market price. When it charges a market price, the transaction is considered commercial, and not a subsidy. Often, however, the government is a monopoly supplier of a good or service - i.e., there is no private market against which the government's prices can be compared - which increases significantly the difficulty of determining whether a subsidy is involved.
One important variant of an in-kind subsidy is privileged access to a government-owned or controlled natural resource. Primary industries benefit greatly from such access - e.g., to public lands for mining or grazing livestock, to state forests for logging, to rivers for irrigation, and to foreign seas (through so-called "access agreements") for fishing - for free or at a below-market price. International disputes over the subsidy element of privileged access to natural resources have been among the most contentious and long-running.
