Treasury has released a report called Disaster Risk Financing and Implementation Plan (2019-2024) where it suggests preparation for natural disasters, as lack of such will result into tampering with finances that are set for other developments. The report has outlined that disasters are most likely to increase due to population, urbanisation and other factors, hence there is need for a disaster budget to be planned ahead of time.

The report reads “It would, therefore, be cost-effective to arrange financing according to a risk layering approach to mitigate the financial impact of disaster events of different frequency and severity”.

The development would be a life and time saver as 2019 saw the call for relief, after the Department of Disaster Management Affairs announced that it needed K30 billionn to help flood victims of Cyclone Idai, of which the authority only had half.

The report gave other examples, including 2015 where floods costed agriculture ($68 million), trade ($11 million), housing ($139 million), transportation ($50 million), water and sanitation ($26 million), education ($12 million), health ($12 million) and industry and trade ($11 million). A total of these cost was 5% of the GDP this year.

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