A man removes mud outside a store affected by the passage of Tropical Storm Laura, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on August 25. Torrents of water carrying rocks down from the mountains barrelled through a marketplace in a ravine of Port-au-Prince before dawn on Sunday, August 23, including the warehouses where many vendors were sleeping. Photo credit Reuters/Andres Martinez Casares.
GRAND CAYMAN, Cayman Islands--Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility Segregated Portfolio Company (CCRIF SPC) made a pay-out of approximately US $7.2 million to the government of Haiti on its Excess Rainfall XSR parametric insurance policy following three days of heavy rainfall associated with Tropical Storm Laura. Haiti also received a pay out of US $290,925 under the Aggregate Deductible Cover (ADC), which is a special feature of CCRIF’s Tropical Cyclone (TC) and Earthquake (EQ) policies, which may be activated to provide a minimum pay-out for TC and EQ events that are objectively not sufficient to trigger the main policy because the modelled loss is below the attachment point.
The approximate total pay-outs to Haiti due to Laura are US $7.45 million, inclusive of the ADC, which was paid to the government on September 7, within 14 days of the end of the rains associated with TS Laura.
Most of the damage on the ground from TS Laura in Haiti was associated with rainfall. The partial assessment of the damage undertaken by the Direction de la Protection Civile and other development partners indicate that Laura and the rains associated with the system resulted in: 31 persons losing their life with another eight persons missing; approximatively 44,175 persons from 8,835 families being adversely affected; flooding of 6,272 homes, of which 2,320 suffered some damage and 243 were destroyed; the flooding of Port-au-Prince’s Toussaint Louverture International Airport; many roads and bridges being damaged, destroyed or blocked; and the destruction of agricultural crops and death of livestock.
Following the pay out to the government, Minister of the Economy and Finance, Michel Patrick Boisvert, indicated, “Purchasing parametric insurance offered by CCRIF is part of the Haitian government’s approach to improving the financial management of natural disaster risks in order to reduce their effects on public finances. Thus, the pay-out of $7.195 million provided by CCRIF to Haiti following the heavy rainfall caused by the passage of Tropical Storm Laura in August will allow us to address current emergencies, notably the implementation of action programmes to rehabilitate affected areas and protect vulnerable social groups.”
This is Haiti’s fourth pay-out from CCRIF. Previous pay-outs have been US $7.8 million following the 2010 earthquake, US $20.4 million on the country’s TC policy following Hurricane Matthew in 2016 which passed over Haiti as a powerful Category 4 hurricane and US $3 million on the country’s XSR policy for that same event. The pay-out of US $20.4 million to Haiti following Matthew remains CCRIF’s single largest pay-out to a member country. Reports on the use of pay-outs from the government indicated that 1.5 million Haitians benefited from the pay-outs in 2016 as the government used about 50 per cent of the funds to supply primarily children and the elderly with water, food and medication and provided funds to families to repair their homes, particularly roofs and to purchase tarpaulins. The remaining monies were used to repair critical infrastructure.
“I would like to take the opportunity here to thank the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) for the payment of Haiti’s insurance premiums either fully or in part since 2010 in support of that country’s overall disaster risk management strategy and resilience building agenda,” said Isaac Anthony, CCRIF’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO). The government of Canada was one of the early donors to the government of Haiti in support of parametric insurance and in 2010 and 2011, in collaboration with the CDB, contributed to the payment of Haiti’s annual premiums.
In June 2020, Haiti and the other 18 Caribbean CCRIF members benefited from a 26 per cent discount on their gross premium which they were able to make use of in this policy year and/or the 2021-22 policy year. This discount was made possible by a grant of US $11 million that was provided to CCRIF by the European Union (EU) for premium support for its Caribbean members under the EU Global COVID-19 Response. The grant has provided much-needed support to Caribbean governments whose social and economic sectors have been significantly disrupted by COVID-19.
Since 2010, CCRIF, through its Technical Assistance Programme has been supporting communities in Haiti to build resilience to natural hazards and the effects of the changing climate. In fact, CCRIF has provided eight small grants to nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) in Haiti totalling US $190,000 to implement projects across 36 communities. These projects have focused on areas such as training for farmers to implement climate-resilient agriculture practices; reforestation of watersheds and training and awareness about earthquake- and hurricane-resilient construction, among others. The direct and indirect beneficiaries of these projects are approximately 250,000 Haitians. “We will continue to support communities in Haiti to build their resilience and significantly reduce their vulnerabilities to hydro-meteorological events and natural hazards in general as a means of protecting lives and livelihoods,” indicated the CCRIF CEO.
CCRIF extends sympathies to the government and people of Haiti for the loss of life, livelihoods, homes and critical infrastructure caused by the rains and floods resulting from Tropical Cyclone Laura.
