Is the country ready to welcome the new coastal baby?

Threat of a new phenomenon Coastal child is getting stronger, especially now that the Multisectoral Commission for National Research on El Niño (EFEN) has changed its alert system from “inactive” to “observation”.

According to Macroconsult, this event caused Peru more than $4 billion in economic damage in 2017, but a few years later, we are still not ready to face a new climate event.

What did the Department of Reconstruction do with the changes?

“We are in the sixth year after the creation Authorization for reconstruction with changesbut there was a lot of inaction and incapacity for public investment, as well as the lack of vision that many authorities had who had already left their post and who put this responsibility on us, which now leaves us in a situation not be ready dealing with a possible child,” explained Mary Moyo, a disaster risk specialist in Esan.

The Office of Reconstruction with Changes is to restore the infrastructure destroyed in the 13 regions of El Niño Costero, provide integrated solutions for rivers, streams and drainages; In addition, the works are of great importance in the mode of intergovernmental interaction.

Its low efficiency is not the only problem, since every year the executive branch allocates a budget for Disaster Prevention and Focus on the Regions. In 2022, it was 1,121 million soles, but execution only reached 68% with departments spending below average.

How did the regions interfere?

“Ancash was department which had the highest budget but only used 40% of its resources. Among other notable cases, Huancavelica, Huanuco, Ica and Junin were among the group of departments that used less than 60% of their resources for prevention and emergency investment projects in 2022, while the worst-performing department was Pasco, which only completed 8.6% of their budget,” explained Paulo Quekesana, economic research analyst at Comexperú.

El Niño Costero impacted the Peruvian economy, which grew by just 2.5% in 2017, and caused a drop in production in eight sectors of economic activity, such as agriculture and mining, in March, the month of Waiko.

According to Eduardo Jimenez, head of the Macroconsult information system, if the event is registered in the fall, there will be no serious consequences.

“GDP for February and March 2017 rose to zero due to the fact that economic activity was also interrupted. The information that we have so far is that if there was any phenomenon, it would have arrived more by May or generally by the middle of the year, which for us is already autumn, winter may even begin already. If there is a baby at this stage, which appears to be the case, the effects will be much more limited,” Jimenez said.

For now, Efen warned that the sea’s abnormal warming will continue until mid-autumn, with moderate to heavy rainfall in various parts of the country, such as the northern and central coasts, in March.

Even though the rains are now flooding the streets of Piura and causing flooding in Yauyos or Huaycos in Arequipa, the implementation of this year’s climate disaster prevention budget has advanced only 6%.