China has accelerated its development of a catastrophe insurance scheme in response to the recent increased frequency of natural disasters, a conference was told yesterday. At the Asia Pacific Agricultural Insurance and Reinsurance Conference, China Daily cited an unnamed official as saying that "a special team, led by the Ministry of Finance, has been set up to work on the catastrophe insurance scheme". The process has been slow because such a scheme would require state support and the cooperation of a number of different departments. At the same conference, Yuan Yi of the National Disaster Reduction Centre, said that drought was the main problem for the Chinese agriculture sector, while Huang Yanxin, deputy director of the regulation department of the Ministry of Agriculture, said that "the lack of a risk diversification system, or a catastrophe insurance scheme, has seriously hampered the development of agriculture insurance". Yu Qing, vice-president at China Re (Group) Corp, said that there were alternatives for the agriculture sector to a catastrophe insurance scheme. He said that an agriculture reinsurance community could be established, "to increase insurers' underwriting capacity and diversify their risks by bringing in more insurers".