Vietnam likely to incur physical damages of 1.4 billion dollars every year due to natural disasters: WB

Vietnam is likely to incur, on average, 30.2 trillion Vietnamese dong (1.4 billion U.S. dollars) every year in physical damages due to floods, typhoons and earthquakes, said a catastrophe risk model on Tuesday.

The model was presented at a workshop on Disaster Risk Finance and Insurance co-held by the World Bank (WB) and Vietnamese Ministry of Finance in capital Hanoi.

According to the WB, residential and public assets (buildings and infrastructures) contribute 65 percent and 11 percent of total damage, respectively.

In the next 50 years, Vietnam has a 40 percent chance of experiencing damage exceeding 141.2 trillion Vietnamese dong (6.7 billion U.S. dollars) from typhoons, floods or earthquake, said the model.

This model, developed for the first time in Vietnam, provides the government with better assessment of the likelihood and severity of loss from catastrophes. It can also be used to plan for the financial impacts of catastrophes before they occur. The final model will be delivered by December 2016, said the WB.

The WB urged Vietnam to have a financial protection strategy to better protect its population and budget against the cost imposed by natural disasters. Bringing together different financial instruments to fund response and reconstruction, such a strategy should be one component of a broader disaster risk management and climate change plan, said the bank. Endit