An official of the United Nations Development Program said in a press briefing today, Tuesday, that the damages caused by the devastating earthquake in Turkey will exceed 100 billion dollars.
The comments come ahead of a donor conference next week. “It is clear from the calculations made so far that the damages provided by the government and endorsed by international partners will exceed $100 billion,” said Louisa Fenton, the program’s official, via video link from Gaziantep, Turkey.
More than 52,000 people died in Turkey and Syria as a result of the earthquake that occurred on the sixth of last February.
Fenton added that the preliminary figure includes only Turkey and will be used as the basis for a donors’ conference scheduled to be held in the Belgian capital, Brussels, on March 16 to raise funds to help the earthquake victims.
The World Bank previously estimated the amount of material damage caused by the earthquake in Turkey at about $34.2 billion, or about 4% of the GDP for the year 2021.
Fenton described the situation in Hatay, the Turkish region most affected by the earthquake, as “terrible”, saying that hundreds of thousands of homes had been destroyed, adding that the needs were enormous but the resources were scarce.