Fiscal Resilience to Natural Disasters
Lessons from Country Experiences
Natural disasters continue to cause widespread damage and losses, with fast growing economies particularly exposed. Governments often shoulder a significant share of the costs of disaster recovery and reconstruction. This is true in OECD countries and even more so in developing economies, where private insurance markets are not as well developed. The fiscal impact of disasters on a government’s budget can be sizeable. Expenditures for the government arise from both explicit and implicit commitments to compensate for disaster losses. This report presents the results of a study that compares country practices in the management of the financial implications of disasters on government finances for a set of OECD member and partner countries particularly exposed to natural hazards.
Australia
The vast territory of Australia is marked by diverse climatic conditions and landscapes, and accordingly by a wide variety of weather-related and geophysical risks ranging from bushfires, floods and storms to earthquakes (See table below). The occurrence, frequency and intensity of different types of natural disasters vary with location.
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