Fiscal Resilience to Natural Disasters : Lessons from Country Experiences

OECD ; World Bank

OECD:Paris

关键词: FISCAL SUSTAINABILITY;    NATURAL DISASTER;    FINANCIAL RESILIENCE;    CONTINGENT LIABILITY;    RISK MANAGEMENT;   

DOI  :  10.1787/27a4198a-en
RP-ID  :  141358

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Large-scale catastrophic and smallerrecurrent disasters generate considerable economic losses.Over the past thirty years, damages from major disastershave increased significantly. In the last ten years alone,both high-income and fast-growing middle-income economieshave experienced an estimated 1.2 trillion US dollars ineconomic costs from disruptive shocks due to hazards such asstorms or floods. The costs of disasters are often largelyshouldered by governments, particularly where insurancecoverage for these costs is limited. Often governments arenot only responsible for the costs related to restoringpublic assets and services, but are also asked to providefinancing for other explicit and implicit commitments madeprior to a disaster. The costs that disasters impose ongovernments, and ultimately on taxpayers should beconsidered contingent liabilities or, when disasters lead toreductions in public revenues, contingent revenue losses.These expenses and revenue losses arise only if an uncertainevent, such as a disaster, actually happens.Disaster-related contingent liabilities are one type ofgovernment contingent liability. This report presents thefindings of a comparative study that assesses howeffectively governments manage disaster-related contingentliabilities, and the potential fiscal risks arising fromthem, within public finance frameworks. The report documentsand compares the policies and practices of a set of nineselected middle- and high-income economies focusing on theirresponse to and plans for disasters from a public financialperspective. Economies were selected on the basis of theirexposure to and regular experience of natural disasters, andwith the aim of including economies of different sizes andfiscal capacity. Part 1 of the report first describes theeconomic impacts, and more specifically the fiscal impacts,arising from disasters in the selected economies. The ninedetailed case studies are included as part 2 of the report.