The Philippines is seeking a fresh $500-million loan from the World Bank to sustain its ongoing initiatives aimed at making the country more resilient and immediately respond to natural disasters.
World Bank documents showed that the proposed Third Disaster Risk Management (DRM) Development Policy Loan (DPL) with a Catastrophe Deferred-Drawdown Option (CAT-DDO) is being considered for approval of the Washington-based multilateral lender’s board in March next year.
The new development policy financing to be implemented by the Department of Finance will “strengthen the policy and institutional capacity of the government of the Philippines to reduce disaster risk, respond to and recover from natural disasters,” the World Bank said.
“This will be achieved by supporting policy actions aimed at further strengthening the policy, regulations and institutional framework for disaster risk reduction, and further enhancing the capacity to respond and recover from disasters,” it added.
The Philippines earlier secured $500 million each in credit lines for CAT-DDOs 1 and 2 in 2011 and 2015, respectively.
The 2011 CAT-DDO was the first-of-its-kind liquidity facility in the Asia-Pacific region.