More than 100 delegates from 21 APEC member economies, APEC financial officials, and experts from a number of international financial organisations attended a seminar on disaster risk financing and insurance policies in Nha Trang city, the south central province of Khanh Hoa on February 21.

Addressing the event, part of the APEC 2017 activities, Nguyen Viet Loi, head of the National Institute for Finance under the Ministry of Finance, noted that Asia-Pacific is among most vulnerable regions to natural disasters.

Between 2005 and 2014, the region suffered from1,625 natural disasters or 40 percent of total disasters in the globe, killing nearly 500,000 people and affecting 1.4 billion others, accounting for 80 percent of affected people around the world, said Loi.

He highlighted that property losses in the 10-year period amounted to 520 billion USD, equivalent to 45 percent of total global economic losses caused by natural disasters.

Vietnam has also been seriously hit by the disasters, whicheach year kill about 750 people and cause an economic loss of about 1 percent of the country’s GDP.

Participants discussed the disaster risk financing and insurance initiative implemented in the APEC over the past years, as well as national financial strategies in response to natural disaster risksand the development of database on public property and disaster risk insurance.

At the same time, they also sought ways to increase experience sharing in building natural disaster risk financingand insurance solutions, improving capacity in dealing with disaster consequences and reducing budget spending burdens and risks to State property.

The seminar looked towards the building of a programme on natural risk financing solutions and disaster assessment models to support APEC member economies in developing their new solution systems on risk management and transfer.

A report on the event’s outcomes will be submitted to the APEC Finance and Central Bank Deputies’ Meeting slated for February 23-24 in NhaTrang.

VNA