US$14.85 Million Grant to Reinforce Jamaica’s Resilience to Natural Disasters

WASHINGTON, October 22, 2019 –The World Bank announced a US$14.85 million grant from the Global Risk Financing Facility (GRiF) to support Jamaica in expanding its financial protection against natural disaster risks. The GRiF is a multi-donor trust fund housed at the World Bank, supported by Germany and the United Kingdom and this grant represents the largest made by GRiF to a middle-income country.

World Bank Country Director for the Caribbean, Tahseen Sayed, made the announcement at the event “Learning from Jamaica’s Economic Turnaround” during the World Bank-IMF Annual Meetings. The event featured a presentation from Minister of Finance, Nigel Clarke on the lessons from Jamaica’s success in reducing public debt by almost 50 percent of GDP in six and a half years while reducing unemployment and inflation to historically low levels. Despite Jamaica’s fiscal achievements, the country remains vulnerable to natural disasters and extreme weather events that could threaten the macroeconomic outlook and fiscal gains.

Mr. Nigel Clarke, Jamaican Minister of Finance said, “Approximately 18 months ago we set out our policy to take a multi-layered and strategic approach to protect Jamaica against the potential fiscal shocks that can be caused by natural disasters. In March we began the capitalization of a Natural Disaster Fund with a historic allocation even as we finalized our application, with World Bank assistance, to the GRiF.  Assistance from the GRiF is crucial as the most significant of the layers involve low frequency, high severity events that can be covered, in part, by risk transfer instruments such as a catastrophe bond, which requires premiums to be paid and hence fiscal space. This GRiF Grant is therefore highly appreciated as it makes the goal of multi-layered coverage more realizable by assisting Jamaica in covering the premium cost of a risk transfer instrument.”

Recognizing the risk of natural disasters, the government has embarked on an ambitious reform program, combining expanded financial protection against disasters with fiscal and public financial management reforms designed to enhance resilience.

“This GRiF grant bears testimony to Jamaica’s strong progress in building fiscal and financial resilience,” said Ms. Sayed.“The World Bank remains committed to deepening its partnership to help the country in its efforts tosustain these hard-won gains. We are pleased that the GRiF grant is one part of a package of new support provided by the World Bank, which includes US$140millionfor fiscal resilience, growth, and enhancing social safety nets.”

The World Bank, with support from the United Kingdom, is providing technical assistance for Jamaica’s preparation of a National Disaster Risk Financing Policy. The World Bank is also working with the Jamaican government on risk modeling, which could be used to access risk insurance through the capital markets.

GRiF is supported by Germany and the United Kingdom to strengthen the financial resilience of vulnerable countries by enabling earlier and more reliable response and recovery to climate shocks, disasters, and crises. Within the World Bank, it is managed by the Disaster Risk Financing and Insurance Program and the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery. It supports the establishment of pre-arranged risk financing instruments, including market-based instruments like insurance. GRiF contributes to the goals of the InsuResilience Global Partnership as set out in its Vision 2025.