In 2023, spring frosts caused the most damage

Development of damage mitigation benefits paid for spring frost damage by district in 2023 (Photo: AKI PÁIR)

In Pillar I of the risk management system, the number of members increased by 5.3 percent in 2023, from 72,851 to 76,712 people compared to 2022. The damage mitigation contribution paid, on the other hand, hardly changed, increasing from HUF 6,177 million to HUF 6,185 million.

The number of reported damage events in 2023 was only 11.2 percent of the extremely high 51,571 damage events of the previous year

The 5,759 claims are low not only compared to the exceptionally harmful year 2022, but also compared to previous years (27.3 percent of 2021, 31.4 percent of 2020). The resources of the Compensation Fund for the current year were HUF 13,033 million, which is 2.8 percent higher compared to the previous year. This more than covered the low HUF 2,822 million amount of the rightfully claimed damage mitigation benefit compared to previous years.

Due to the frosts at the end of March and beginning of April, in 2023 the most damage events (1,730 damage reports) were related to spring frost damage, followed by hail damage (1,586 damage reports)

These accounted for 30.0 and 27.5 percent of all claims. However, spring frost damage was concentrated on a smaller area than hail damage – spring frost damage occurred on 12.6 percent of the total reported damaged area (13,177 hectares) and hail damage on 31.2 percent (32,637 hectares). HUF 861.8 million and HUF 476.0 million in damage mitigation benefits were paid for spring frost damage, which is 30.5 and 16.9 percent of the total payment, respectively.

In 2023, there were 920 damage reports related to drought damage

That’s just 1.9 percent of the announcements for the extreme drought year 2022, thanks to fairly wet weather. However, in terms of the affected area and the amount of damage mitigation benefits paid, drought damage was the second largest proportion of all damage events in 2023 – it accounted for 21.4 percent of the total damaged area (22,417 hectares) and 28.1 percent of all payments ( HUF 792.5 million, which is only 1.6 percent of the previous year). There were 774 storm damage reports in 2023, which is 4.8 times the number of the previous year A total of 20,044 hectares were affected, which is 19.1 percent of the total damaged area. HUF 227.3 million damage mitigation benefits were paid for storm damage, which is 8.1 percent of all damage mitigation benefits paid in 2023. In 2023, the four main types of damage accounted for 87.0 percent of all notifications, 84.3 percent of all damaged areas, and 83.5 percent of paid damage mitigation benefits.

Source: Prepared based on MÁK data at the Financial Research Department of the AKI

AKI PÁIR