Finance Commission to discuss disaster relief funding

The 15th Finance Commission will be deliberating on financing disaster risk management in a two-day workshop starting today in the national capital.

The workshop will discuss central and state-level financing of disaster relief, disaster financing preparedness of the country and international best practices. Representatives from multilateral banks, the private sector, public finance specialists and government officials will participate in it.

Elaborating on the 'International Workshop on Financing Disaster Risk Management', chairman of the Finance Commission N K Singh said, "On 12th and 13th November, the World Bank in conjunction with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) of the Ministry of Home Affairs has the two-day workshop to consider all the modalities and the issues of disaster management. We are taking the expert papers prepared in this regard into account and also the deliberations that emanate from it and will come up with such recommendations that we think are appropriate at this time."

The experts will also deliberate on innovative credit facilities, use of catastrophe bonds, the emergent shift from indemnity-based insurance to parametric insurance and the rise of the regional and sub-national risk pooling mechanism.

Disaster relief gains significance as the country faces increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters such as floods, landslides, cyclones or droughts.

Disaster relief is one of the purposes for providing grants to the states. The Finance Commission, which is looking into the devolution of central taxes, is tasked with advising the central government on the form of grants provided to the states and on the transfer of central taxes to the states. The Commission will be giving the recommendations in this regard for a period of five years (2020-25) by October-end next year.