JAMAICA could reduce its contribution to, or pull out of the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) if Local Government Minister Desmond McKenzie has his way.

Speaking with the

Jamaica Observer after the press launch of Disaster Preparedness Month 2017, at Jamaica House yesterday, McKenzie said: “My position on it is that it is a policy that is not beneficial to the country, because in order for us to benefit the country would have to be destroyed totally — all of us would have to die before we could make any claim.“It is up for review,” he continued. “I did raise the matter at Cabinet on Monday. Minister Shaw advised that he will be engaged in discussions to look at the terms and conditions to get something that is more suitable that as a country we can benefit from. So the discussions are well advanced.”The local government minister said the matter was discussed, at length, by regional governments when he attended a disaster risk reduction conference in Cancun, Mexico, last week.Last year, Jamaica paid $738 million in premiums and a budget of $825 million has been earmarked for renewal of the policy, which is due this month. Meanwhile, a total of US$69 million has been paid out to 10 of the 16 member States since the start of the facility in 2007, but Jamaica was not among them.McKenzie said the question of renewal is one for the Cabinet to make, but “one thing I can say is that we are looking for a reduction [in] the premium, and also for a policy that is more suitable to us”.Jamaica is now paying for the maximum levels of coverage in each of the categories of events covered under the facility.In the 10 years that Jamaica has been contributing to the scheme the country has not made a claim because, despite numerous weather events that have led the Government to come up with billions to rehabilitate critical infrastructure, the claimable threshold has not been reached.The parametric insurance policy does not compensate for actual loss or damage, but payout is instead predicated on a specific trigger: The force of the event such as wind speed, and storm surge in the case of tropical cyclones; specific magnitude of earthquakes; and specific rainfall amounts in the case of excess rainfall.The local government minister said other insurance options will be examined.“We want to look to see if anything can come out of CDEMA (Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency). It is just unfortunate that, over the years, nobody has paid any real attention to this,” he said.McKenzie noted that this is not the first time he has called attention to the issue.“It was only when I raised this matter when I was the Opposition spokesperson and when I raised it again in my sectoral debate (last year) that it now seems to have got [attention],” he said.The CCRIF was also discussed at a recent meeting of the Infrastructure and Physical Development Committee of Parliament, where Members of Parliament questioned whether Jamaica could claim on the policy for the latest rain events which have wrecked critical infrastructure across the island. The damage from these events has so far been preliminarily assessed at $3.5 billion.The CCRIF coverage was last year expanded to include excess rainfall, as previously the facility only provided coverage for hurricanes/tropical cyclones and earthquakes of a pre-defined magnitude.