Presently the CCRIF is in Belize for their very first time, and it is a perfect opportunity for them to make a donation to purchase equipment for the Belize Met Office. That donation of $200,000 was handed over today to the Ministry of Finance, and they invited the press to observe it. 7News was there, and here's what those at the head table had to say:

Milo Pearson - Chairman, CCRIF SPC
"Our main focus has been providing parametric insurance over the past 10 years. CRRIF operates as a non-profit company and any profits we make go into helping our members to reducing premiums as well as providing technical assistance."

Isaac Anthony - CEO, CCRIF SPC
"I am pleased to be here to participate in this signing ceremony. The agreement provides for $100,000 for the purchase of about 40-50 automatic weather stations that will provide the Met Service of Belize with access to real-time rainfall data."

"The Met office has indicated that this will significantly improve the government's ability to monitor, record and forecast rainfall within Belize and better prepare the country for hydromet events."

Yvette Alvarez- Senior Advisor, Ministry of Finance
"We want to say thank you, we Belizeans in particular want to say thank you to the World Bank and other donor communities who have made all of this possible."

So, since this is our first opportunity to speak to the CCRIF officials, we asked them to share a bit about their organization, and the business of insuring Countries who face natural disasters like hurricanes every year. Here's what they told us:

Isaac Anthony - CEO, CCRIF SPC
"CRRIF was establish for the governments initially to provide insurance for various catastrophes like earthquakes, tropical cyclone and more recently we have rainfall and currently we are now working on the development of a drought product and as we spoke earlier on as well, we are also looking at a product that is really design for the fisher folk, for the fisheries sector and so on. So essentially when CRRIF was establish, the intention was to deal with just the governments. But now we are going beyond that to take into account the needs of vulnerable groups like farmers, the fisher folks etc."

Yvette Alvarez- Senior Advisor, Ministry of Finance
"We presently purchased from CRRIF a coverage for tropical cyclones and excess rainfall and for the first time last year, we were able to collect some $200,000 plus US dollars following the excess rainfalls of Hurricane Earl. And as people who sit in the Ministry of Finance who have to find the funds to deal with all that happens after a hurricane, those funds, though small, were welcomed."

"We never collected under the tropical cyclone part of the policy, but we are convinced that it is a policy that we would want to renew on a continuing basis."

Isaac Anthony - CEO, CCRIF SPC
"We believe that at this time there is actually in need, in particularly when you consider the vulnerability of the Caribbean Countries, there is definitely the need for more coverage and as we meet and we discuss this issue of renewance with our members, it's always a matter on the agenda. For example, just to indicate that many countries are constraint by the fiscal situation. They can only buy so much. But ideally, countries should seek to buy more. But that's an objective that can actually be accomplish with time. We look at all our members, but the important thing to note is that each country has its own risk profile and so that is one of the things that we would have done, say for example for Belize, because Belize's risk profile is in many ways different to let's say St. Lucia or Grenada and so on. But that notwithstanding they may end up having dealing with the same hazards like tropical cyclone, excess rainfall and so on. But the level of vulnerability could vary from country to country."

CCRIF is looking at a program for vulnerable groups such as the fisher folks in these countries, which would provide them with insurance coverage. That program is still in the development stage.