The World Bank said yesterday, Monday, that the two major earthquakes that rocked Turkey on the sixth of February caused direct material damage amounting to about $ 34.2 billion, but the total costs of reconstruction and recovery facing the country may be double that.
"According to the bank's estimates, the two earthquakes will also cut at least half a percentage point from Turkey's projected GDP growth this year, between 3.5% and 4%," Humberto Lopez, World Bank Country Director in Turkey, told reporters.
The situation in Syria, which was also affected by the quake, was "truly catastrophic," said Anna Birdie, World Bank Group Vice President for Europe and Central Asia. The bank will issue a separate damage assessment for Syria on Tuesday.
She added that the initial rapid assessment of damages in Turkey, amounting to $ 34.2 billion, is equivalent to about 4% of its economic output in 2021, but that did not include the indirect or secondary consequences for the growth of its economy or the most recent earthquake that occurred a week ago.
"Our experience says that reconstruction needs can range between two and three times the estimated direct physical damage," she said.
The two major earthquakes caused more than 44,300 deaths, and were the worst in Turkey's modern history, and a report by the bank indicates that 1.25 million people have become homeless due to damage to their homes or their complete collapse.
The report found that major damage occurred in 11 provinces in southern Turkey, which have some of the highest poverty rates in the country and host more than 1.7 million Syrian refugees, or about half of the total number of Syrian refugees in Turkey.
The World Bank said that 7,500 aftershocks followed the quakes, causing the biggest disaster of this kind in Turkey in more than 80 years.
The World Bank provided $780 million in immediate assistance to Turkey from two existing projects there, in addition to $1 billion in a new emergency recovery project.