The Philippines is urging member-states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) to strengthen cooperation on disaster-risk financing and insurance (DRFI) strategies, as the region is vulnerable to natural calamities that often lead to loss of lives and economic disruptions that threaten growth.
On behalf of the Philippine government, Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III emphasized the country’s position on DRFI during the recently concluded 23rd Asean Finance Ministers’ Meeting in Chiang Rai, Thailand. Dominguez said that ongoing activities that can be further enhanced through inter-sectoral cooperation, including regional-capacity building on information and experience sharing, awareness and education on DRFI, and open discussions on fiscal risk management.
During the meeting, the finance chief expressed support for Asean’s DRFI initiative of liberalizing catastrophic risk insurance. This, Dominguez explained, not only allows for greater access to financial services that protect against disaster-risks in the region but also encourages the development of disaster risk information and modeling systems that can be used “to assess the economic and fiscal impacts of natural disasters, including the sharing of disaster risk data and information at the national level.”
The DOF said the Philippines is among the countries in the region most vulnerable to natural disasters, with Supertyphoon Yolanda (Haiyan) in 2013 alone claiming over 6,000 lives and costing the Philippine economy an estimated P571 billion or $12.87 billion in damages, hampering economic growth by about 0.9 percentage points that year, and another 0.3 percentage points in 2014.
In line with this, the Philippines successfully placed on the international market its “Parametric Insurance Policy” with a maximum cover of P20.49 billion that can provide quick liquidity to national and local governments, which took effect on December 19, 2018.