By NEIL HARTNELL
Tribune Business Editor
nhartnell@tribunemedia.net
Prime Minister Perry Christie yesterday said Hurricane Joaquin damage estimates had increased to $100 million, as he pledged to explore whether insurance could further help the Bahamas recover from such storms.
Addressing a Paris seminar on the challenges faced by the Bahamas and other small island developing nations when it came to the impact of climate change, Mr Christie said the Category Four storm had “decimated” the southern and central Family Islands.
“Last month, Hurricane Joaquin decimated whole island economies in the southern and central Bahamas,” he told the SIDS gathering, a side conference to the meeting of global leaders on climate change.
“The estimates of the damage is $100 million. The sea took weeks to recede. Whole communities were cut off. There is no doubt what the Bahamas faces if something does not change.”
The Government initially pegged Joaquin’s damage at $60 million, but that has since been increased to $80 million and now $100 million. Mr Christie added that the Government’s costs alone could run to $56 million in a recent address to the House of Assembly, depending on where a road in Acklins was located.
The Prime Minister yesterday also vowed to explore whether there were new insurance solutions for the costs involved in post-hurricane repairs and restoration, although he did not indicate whether this was for government-owned assets, or private as well.
“As soon as I return home, I intend also to look at the question of insurance and how this can help us recover the loss and damage from these storms,” Mr Christie said.
“Insurance should be there to help in this, and its applications ought to help, and the country should not be denied compensation by resort to outdated legalisms. This was our most recent experience with Hurricane Joaquin.”
It is unclear what he was referring to, but it has been traditional practice by successive governments not to insure public buildings and infrastructure against hurricanes, instead merely financing their replacement from the Budget.
The Bahamian insurance industry is currently pegging gross losses caused by Hurricane Joaquin at $14 million, a sum equivalent to just 23 per cent of the initial $60 million damages estimate.
The Bahamas, as a low lying island nation, is especially vulnerable to sea level rise resulting from climate change and global warming.
And Mr Christie also lashed out at the development benchmarks, such as per capita income, that prevented the Bahamas from accessing grant funding.
The Bahamas has the third highest per capita income in the Western Hemisphere, and this and other economic indicators have frequently been used as justification for weaning this nation off grant funding - an issue that has been a ‘sore point’ for more than a decade.
“The Bahamas, as a small island developing state, shares many of the unique characteristics and special circumstances of its fellow SIDS,” Mr Christie said yesterday.
“We are extremely vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change, and are faced with similar constraints in meeting our goals in all three dimensions of sustainable development.
“Regrettably, because of our high GDP per capita, we are often cut off from much needed concessional and grant funding. It is in this context that the Bahamas continues to underscore that Gross Domestic Product/Gross National Income per capita should not serve as the main component in determining the access that SIDS have to financial resources for our adaptation needs in particular.”
Comments
sheeprunner12 8 years, 3 months ago
Can he itemize these figures any clearer than what is itemized in the National Budget?????? ........ or is this the voodoo economics necessary to get UN money???????
Well_mudda_take_sic 8 years, 3 months ago
$100 million works out to be $66,667 for each of the 1,500 Bahamians in the Southern Bahamas that were seriously impacted by Hurricane Joaquin..... and this is on top of the millions of dollars in private sector aid that these 1,500 Bahamians have already received to date. Now let's just pretend for a moment that Joaquin had hit the Central and Northwestern Bahamas where 250,000 Bahamians live plus 80,000 illegal aliens for a total of 330,000 people. Do the maths [330,000 people x $66,667] and you come up with $22,000,000,000 - Yep, that $22 Billion dollars with a capital 'B'. That's over 3 times our National Debt! This simply proves just how utterly ridiculous Christie's $100 million figure is. The man (or whatever Christie likes to to think of himself as) is nothing but a certifiable looney tune with mashed or mushed dead grey matter between his ears!
sheeprunner12 8 years, 3 months ago
OK ............... lets try and itemize this figure: government buldings(clinics, schools, Office spaces etc) .....................??????, road rebuilding and repair .............?????, docking facilities .............????? airport rebuilding /repair ...............??????, BEC/WSC/BTC/CB .........??????? seawalls & bridges repair/replace ................???????? special needs home replace/repair ............???????? kickbacks from non-tendered contracts .........................?????????????
asiseeit 8 years, 3 months ago
Boy the PLP minions sure are going to have a great Christmas, just think how much of the 100 million will be wasted, mismanaged, and stolen. This government must be investigated for corruption, they are not even trying to hide it.
Honestman 8 years, 3 months ago
Another nice little earner for the PLP "family"!
killemwitdakno 8 years, 3 months ago
Government overestimates everything else but when in came to recovery , they wanted to as cheap as possible. Anyone could guess it was more than $60million.
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