The United Nations said on Tuesday (March 7) that the damage caused by the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that devastated Turkey and Syria last month has been assessed at over $100 billion for Turkey alone.
“Already it is clear that just the damages alone will amount to more than $100 billion,” Louisa Vinton of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) told AFP reporters via video link from Gaziantep in Turkey, adding that the recovery costs “will be on top of that”.
More than 45,000 people have died in Turkey and 5,000 more have died in neighbouring Syria as a result of the earthquake its aftershocks that hit on February 6.
This week, the World Bank estimated that Turkey’s devastating earthquake, which completely destroyed some communities, had inflicted damage worth more than $34 billion, with the cost of recovery likely to be double that amount.
As per Vinton, the Turkish government, with assistance from the UNDP, the World Bank, and the European Union, estimated far greater damage.
While preliminary, “it is clear from the calculations being done to date that the damage figure presented by the government and supported by the three international partners will be in excess of $100 billion,” she said.
Once completed, this estimate will be the basis for a recovery and reconstruction donor conference in Brussels next week, she added.
She stated that the UNDP was “very disappointed and saddened” by the current state of the financial appeals’ level of response.
‘A $1 billion flash appeal made on February 16 is currently funded at just 9.6 percent of the total,” she said.
(With inputs from agencies)
