OPPOSITION Leader Phillip Davis yesterday called the $2.8 million premium paid by the government to renew its Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility policy a “colossal waste.”

Mr Davis told The Tribune the Minnis administration should have listened to its technical staff before renewing the tropical cyclone policy, and scoffed at reports the government intended to renegotiate the payouts from the Caribbean disaster insurance facility.

"It's just a mad shop folly," he said, "when you ignore historical facts and good advice. You should have listened to your technical staff. And you don't pay and then re-negotiate, where is that done? You negotiate and come to an agreement that's favourable in the first instance, and then you pay."

Mr Davis continued: "(Prime Minister Dr Hubert) Minnis claimed that we missed getting a payout for Matthew. We still (disagree with that statement). He said he would table the letter (from CCRIF), he hasn't done it yet. What we left in place, which was still open (with CCRIF), was our agitation about how unfair the process was, particularly for the Bahamas.

"This year for the first time they introduced (the ADC), and what that is, is if you are a member and they see that you had losses they'll give you some pennies. Irma didn't trigger the policy at all," he said.

"This is a colossal waste and you get $234,000 and you bragging on that."

K Peter Turnquest, the deputy prime minister and minister of finance, told Tribune Business on Wednesday the government wanted to revise the payout “trigger points” with the CCRIF by dividing the Bahamas into zones, to maximise the potential insurance payout following a major hurricane.

CCRIF announced on Tuesday that it would make a total of US$29.6 million to six Caribbean governments affected by Hurricane Irma under their TC policies, with the Bahamas and Haiti receiving payments as a result of a new feature.

The new feature, Aggregate Deductible Cover (ADC), was introduced in this policy year as a means to help members when modelled losses do not trigger a payout despite observed losses on the ground, the statement explained.

According to CCRIF, the Bahamas will receive US$234,000.

Mr Davis said: "The first thing you want to remember is that this CCRIF, that was started in 2007 and we used to pay around $900,000 in premium. We realised its threshold to receive any benefits were such that we could never ever benefit. Once that realisation came to the fore, we had a committee formed by our government that included the Met Office people, finance people, the port people, and a couple other agencies to review this whole thing to determine whether it was prudent to continue.”

He added: "They said it was not prudent to continue, because of the nature of our country it's very unlikely that we'll ever be able to benefit from the insurance, hence we discontinued."