UNITED NATIONS: Damage from the catastrophic earthquake that struck Turkiye and Syria last February has been estimated at over $100 billion for Turkiye alone, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
“Already it is obvious that just the damages alone will amount to more than $100 billion,” Louisa Vinton of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) told media person via video link from Gaziantep in Turkiye, adding that the recovery costs “will be more than that.”
A quake with a magnitude of 7.8 struck on February 6, and its aftershocks have claimed more than 45,000 lives in Turkiye and 5,000 in neighbouring Syria.
The World Bank estimated last week that the devastating earthquake, which shattered scores of cities, had caused damage worth over $34 billion in Turkiye, with recovery likely to exceed the estimated amount.
But Vinton said the Turkish government had calculated more damage with assistance from the World Bank, UNDP, and the EU (European Union).
UN seeks more funds for recovery phase
She further said that it was obvious from the calculations being done to date that the damage figure mentioned by the government and the three international supporting partners will be in excess of $100 billion.
Once completed, she said this estimate would be a bottom line for a recovery and reconstruction donor conference to be held in Brussels next week.
She lamented that, so far, UNDP was “very disappointed and saddened” by the poor response to funding appeals to date.
She said a $1 billion flash appeal made on February 16 is funded at just 9.6 percent of the total.
