The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas would not have received any Hurricane Matthew relief from a Caribbean disaster insurance fund because the storm was not strong enough to trigger a payout, the Government revealed yesterday.

Michael Halkitis, minister of state for finance, told Parliament that the Government had ceased financial contributions to the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) because the Bahamas would only have received compensation in the event of a Category 5 hurricane.

Matthew came through this nation as a Category Three/Four storm, and Mr Halkitis said the Christie administration had decided to drop CCRIF participation and establish its own disaster fund as “the threshold was just too high”.

  He was addressing questions from Opposition leader, Dr Hubert Minnis, who noted that in Matthew’s wake CCRIF will pay out a little over $20 million - the largest payment ever made by the fund -  to Haiti.

Matthew had triggered a payment on that country’s ‘tropical cyclone’ policy, while Barbados is set to receive a $975,000 payout under the CCRIF facility for Caribbean governments.

Mr Halkitis said that while the Bahamas has been a member of CCRIF for many years, it has never been able to access any relief funding under the facility. 

“My advice is that in order for us to ever get a claim under CCRIF, we would have to be hit by a Category five hurricane,” he said.

“The Government of the Bahamas made a decision that instead of continuing to pay this premium where there was practically no chance of us every being able to claim, we would establish a disaster fund where we would put our funds every year.

“No policy lapsed. We took the decision, after advice, to discontinue that because it was virtually impossible to ever get a claim; the threshold was just too high.”

Prime Minister Perry Christie added: “We had a category four impact our islands that are extraordinarily vulnerable and they disqualified us in that regard.

“It was that thinking that led the Bahamas to decide that it would rather insure itself by making contributions to a fund.”

    Mr Christie reiterated that due to the Bahamas’ relatively high per capita income, it continues to be disqualified from concessionary lending facilities such as grant funding.

“This is an extraordinarily difficult position for the Bahamas,” said Mr Christie.