Disaster risk reduction and climate change adaption budget tagging: Mauritius country report

This report contains the key findings and recommendations from piloting combined DRR and CCA budget tagging (DCBT) in Mauritius. Building on previous reforms on DRR and climate change expenditure tagging in Mauritius, the project supported the piloting of a combined disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation budget tagging (DCBT) system for the budget period 2023–2024 and 2024–2025.

The findings indicate that:

• Total unweighted DRR and CCA expenditure using the narrow definition of “principal” and “significant” was MUR 38.927 billion, 15.1% of total expenditure by Vote and 5.2% of GDP.
• DRR and CCA expenditure was spread across 34 ministries, departments and agencies and special funds. The top institutions responsible for DRR and/or CCA expenditure are the Ministry of Health and Wellness, police service, Ministry of Energy and Public Utilities, Projects Development Fund, National Infrastructure, Ministry of Agro-Industry and Food Security, Climate and Sustainability Fund, and the Mauritius Fire and Rescue Service.
• Average disaster response expenditure was MUR 213 million for 2023–2024, 1% of total DRR and CCA expenditure. Information shared by the Ministry of Finance showed that actual disaster response expenditure was MUR 1.037 billion.17 The DCBT methodology therefore only captured 20% of disaster response expenditure. This finding highlights the limitations of manual budget tagging for tracking and reporting on disaster response expenditure
• Although the expenditure estimates for DRR and CCA from previous studies are not directly comparable, we can infer that the estimates obtained from DCBT for both DRR and CCA are within reasonable bounds.