Report: Earthquakes caused $84bn in damages to Turkiye economy

Turkiye’s worst earthquakes in almost a century have left a trail of destruction that could cost Ankara up to $84.1 billion, a business group said last month, as reported by Reuters.

The report published by the Turkish Enterprise and Business Confederation put the cost of the damage at $84.1 billion including $70.8 billion from the repair of thousands of homes, $10.4 billion from loss of national income and $2.9 billion from loss of working days.

According to the report, the main costs would be rebuilding housing, transmission lines and infrastructure and meeting the short, medium and long-term shelter needs of the hundreds of thousands of people who have been left homeless.

Although oil pipelines continued to operate, natural gas pipelines were damaged.

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Some 13.4 million people who live in the ten provinces hit by the quakes, or 15per cent of Turkiye’s population, have been affected by the quakes. The region also produces close to ten per cent of the country’s GDP, and export about 8.7 percent of Turkiye’s total exports.

The Turkish economy suffers from very high inflation, which exceeded 85 per cent, but it showed rapid growth of 5.6 per cent in 2022, which is higher than the rate predicted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).