Grenada: Disaster Risk Financing Technical Assistance

Report on Risk Finance in Grenada. Photo credit: World Bank

Context and Objectives

The main objective was to support Grenada with:

• Better understanding and managing potential fiscal impacts derived from disasters;
• Building institutional capacity;
• Identifying cost-effective financial protection options against disasters, based on a concrete understanding of the fiscal exposure to disasters and of the disaster risk financing tools currently in use in, or available to, Grenada.

Main Activities and results

• Understanding and quantifying fiscal risk from disasters;
• Analysing and reviewing existing market conditions for the provision of catastrophe risk insurance;
• Building a cost-effective sovereign disaster risk financing and insurance (DRFI) strategy;
• Integrating disaster risk into a comprehensive risk management framework/strategy;
• South-south knowledge exchange: Collaborate and share lessons learnt under the ACP-EU Program with other Small Island Developing States.

Significant results were achieved under all activities.

• A Country Disaster Risk Profile was delivered. Based on baseline data on historical losses and disaster-related government expenditures, and a country profile for earthquake and windstorm risks at the national level, the document helped the Government of Grenada to better understand and quantify the asset value of Grenada’s building stock and of potential future disaster losses to Grenada. 
• A final report on recommendations for a disaster risk finance strategy was published, accompanied by a short video on these recommendations. Another report was published on the domestic insurance market, and by discussions with local insurance companies. The recommendations on the strategy were discussed with the Government of Grenada, and discussions are ongoing with the World Bank on possibilities for future cooperation. The Ministry of Finance recognized the importance of mainstreaming disaster risk finance into budget, fiscal policy and debt management considerations.
• In October 2017, a day with in-depth training for technical experts, as well as with strategic discussions on disaster risk finance strategy implementation for policy makers, was organized with regional stakeholders.

Partnerships and coordination

The World Bank team took advantage of the memorandum of understanding with Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) for sharing data and collaborations. The team had discussions with representatives from the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), Deptartment  for International development (DfID), UK Government.; Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) and the Caribbean Regional Technical Assistance Center (CARTAC). CDEMA and CARTAC participated also in the regional workshop organized under activity 5.

Useful links

In the frame of this project a video was produced describing how the ACP-EU NDRR Program has supported the Governments of Belize, Grenada, Jamaica and Saint Lucia to better understand and manage the fiscal impacts of disasters and to identify cost-effective financial protection options. The video is available here.