Experts For Establishing Insurance Pools To Protect People From Losses In Disasters

Experts have stressed the need for establishing insurance pools at national and sub-national levels in the country to protect farmers and citizens in vulnerable areas from losses in disasters

ISLAMABAD, Dec 8 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 8th Dec, 2022 ) :Experts have stressed the need for establishing insurance pools at national and sub-national levels in the country to protect farmers and citizens in vulnerable areas from losses in disasters.

They were speaking at a plenary session titled, "Disaster Risk Financing in Pakistan" on the fourth day of the 25th Sustainable Development Conference (SDC) of Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), jointly held alongside UNESCAP's 6th South and Southwest Asia High-level Political Forum and Policy Dialogue on SDGs.

The 4-day conference is being held in Islamabad from 5-8 December 2022.

Insurance and Financing Expert at UNDP Pakistan Nasreen Rashid recommended providing subsidies for agriculture insurance, saying that the subsidy should be so cheaper that everybody could afford it. She said the larger the insurance pool, the more affordable it would be. Further, she said, it should be made mandatory, otherwise, it would fail.

She called on the government to establish agriculture insurance pools on a national level besides establishing sub-national pools at district levels.

Chief Executive Officer BoP Zafar Masud said: "We need to have a specialized green financing institution and one of the DFIs in Pakistan needs to work on developing the expertise to run the institution aimed at funding. Specific sort of requirement on the fiscal side for marginal projects, not the existing projects.

"We should put the requirement of insurance in the cities which are not vulnerable make it mandatory on them to be used as a pool for those vulnerable areas, otherwise they would never be able to afford it and the government too has not the fiscal space to support it.

" Executive Director SDPI Dr Abid Q. Suleri said International Financial Institutions (IFIs) need to be more climate responsive, especially to the needs of vulnerable countries. Being one of the most vulnerable countries, Pakistan needs more attention from its international development partners.

He said the insurance mechanism of the global climate shield proposed by Germany can be effective if works.

He said the farmers in the vulnerable districts of Pakistan should be entitled to climate change disaster when the temperature crosses the historic threshold. He said keeping in view the empty promises from the developed world, the national banks and domestic banks should work for financing the flood-hit areas.

He said the government should actively engage the IMF to extend a similar kind of rapid assistance to Pakistan for flood-affected people as it did during the COVID-19 pandemic. He said the IMF extended a $1.4 billion grant and $3.7 billion worth of debt suspension in 2020.

Dr Sanjay Srivastava from UNESCAP, India highlighted five critical infrastructures that must be disaster resilient to avoid cascading impacts, and supply chain disruptions including energy, transport, social (school, hospital), ICT, and water.

He said some kind of regulator measures and actions are required for the above-mentioned sectors which require to be insured.