Government spending in the aftermath of natural disasters in the Philippines

The impacts of natural disasters are devastating in any economy. Multiple hazards brought by natural events affect public infrastructure, including roads, bridges, water and power utilities, hospitals and schools, government buildings, and agriculture. In the past year, aside from the COVID-19 pandemic, two major disasters occurred in the country: typhoon Ulysses and Taal volcano eruption, halted public life, business, and mobility which affected the Philippines’ economy.

In the Philippines, local government units are governmental bodies responsible for rehabilitating the society and rebuild infrastructures from the aftermath of natural disasters. In a recent finding, expenditures on disaster risk reduction in the Philippines for rehabilitation and recovery made up the highest government expenditure valued at approximately 16.2 billion Philippine pesos. By comparison, spending for disaster preparedness was below 700 million Philippines pesos.

Disaster preparedness of the Philippines’ government

The spending for reducing risk has been one factor helping the Philippines rebound from the aftermath of natural calamities. However, the Philippines' government must implement more stringent physical risk-reduction measures and adopt enhanced-engineering technologies to minimize the risk and losses. It is thus important to allocate a higher budget for disaster preparedness. With climate change posing more threat, more disasters are likely happening in the years to come. Given this scenario, assessing the government's efforts in addressing climate change in the Philippines has shown that although the government is aware of the threat, sufficient funds have not been allocated to address climate change, according to a recent survey.

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