The crop insurance project of the Sadharan Bima Corporation (SBC) has settled claims worth Tk 1.7 million for damages of produce against 3,748 policies in two districts in Rajshahi and Noakhali. Currently, the project is being implemented in Noakhali, Rajshahi and Sirajganj districts on a pilot basis. This is the first claims settlements by the crop insurance project in Noakhali and Rajshahi districts. The project office had organised two separate programmes in the districts to mark the claims' settlements. The SBC took the crop insurance project funded by the government of Bangladesh and the Asian Development Bank in 2013. So far, 5,400 farmers have so far taken the policies to avoid any damage from the rains and droughts. The project is also campaigning in favour of the crop insurance in the districts. Wasiful Hoq, project director at the Weather Index-Based Crop Insurance (WIBCI) project, told the FE that farmers are increasingly getting interested in the crop insurance. "We're getting positive response from the farmers," Mr Hoq said. He said farmers were getting interested because their losses from the crop damage caused by climate and natural disasters will be reduced substantially. Meanwhile, the project organised a function at Subarnachor Upazilla in Noakhali Sunday to mark claims' settlements. Subarnachor Upazila Nirbahi Officer Harunur Rashid, representatives from the non-government organisations and a large number of farmers attended the function. The government took the project as an adaptation tool to reduce the risk of climate variability and extreme weather vulnerability in the agriculture sector. The state- owned SBC and the Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD) are jointly implementing the pilot project. The project involving Tk 213.421 million is aimed at increasing the resilience of farm households to climate and natural disaster risks through safety nets against income shocks, access to credit and higher investment in agriculture, the director said. Some 20 weather stations were installed at the rooftop of upazila headquarters to collect weather-related data in the three districts. According to experts, a number of weather index-based insurance products have already been tested and applied across Asia and Africa, with varying degrees of success, as a mechanism to improve the livelihood security by enabling vulnerable populations to transfer risk associated with climate change, extreme weather events and other hazards. But the practice of index-based insurance is almost absent in Bangladesh. The SBC first initiated the crop insurance programme in Bangladesh in 1977, but it failed to produce any outcome mainly due to high claim ratio, coverage of high risk-prone areas, high administrative cost and the absence of monitoring. Source - http://www.thefinancialexpress-bd.com