Vice Minister of Finance attended High-Level Dialogue on
Enhancing Macro-Economic Resilience to Natural Disasters in Fiji
H.E. Mr. Helder Lopes, Vice Minister of Finance, attended
the High-Level Dialogue on Enhancing Macro-Economic Resilience to Natural
Disasters. The Dialogue, which took place on the 25th June 2015, in Nadi, Fiji,
was organized by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for Asia Pacific Region
and attended by the Ministers, Governors, and high level public service
officials from the Pacific Island Countries including Timor-Leste and
Seychelles.
The participants shared their experience and discussed
the policies on how to enhance macro-economic resilience to natural disasters,
aligning monetary policy to enhance resilience to shocks and support growth and
minimizing the risk of debt distress arising from the natural disasters.
H.E. Vice Minister was one of the panelists in the event.
He spoke specifically on the policies of strengthening ex-ante and ex-post
resilience to natural disasters and the leverage of support from the
Development Partners.
H.E. Helder Lopes, in his presentation, stated that
drought and flooding were the two main natural disasters that affecting
Timor-Leste most. He further elaborated that the policies that the Government
had put into place to address these problems were “to set aside money a
contingency fund, through the normal budget process, which amounts to an
average of 5% of the total annual budget to response to ex-post disaster
recovery”. He also added that “the Government starts to design and implement
climate resilient infrastructures” in order to address ex-ante mitigation and
prevention of the risks of natural disasters.
H.E Vice Minister, in his response to the effectiveness
of the Donor’s coordination in the disaster management, emphasized the approach
of “country owed and country led” under the New Deal Agreement. For further
Donor’s assistance, H.E Mr. Helder Lopes proposed that Donors should focus on
“the technical development of local staff” and most importantly on “the
designing and implementation of the climate resilient infrastructures”.
No comments:
Post a Comment