The cost to rebuild Nepal after its most devastating earthquake in eight decades will exceed US$10 billion and take years, Nepalese Minister of Finance Ram Mahat said yesterday.
The government is struggling to save those who may still be trapped, he said in an interview.
“We have reason to believe that there are survivors in the rubble, but we don’t have equipment to deal with the situation,” Mahat said at his office in the capital of Kathmandu. “In Kathmandu Valley itself, big buildings have collapsed and they don’t know how to get people out.”
The reconstruction figure is equivalent to about half of Nepal’s US$20 billion economy, which is smaller than all 50 US states.
An exact estimate of the damage is very difficult to calculate, and the government will appeal to the world for help when the immediate rescue effort ends, Mahat said.
“The cost is incalculable,” he said. “It will be billions and billions of dollars in reconstruction and restoration of infrastructure.”
In a couple of days, the ministry plans to make cost estimates for the relief effort and ask the international community for support.
“It will be multilateral, bilateral and all possible sources,” he said.
Mahat said it was too early to estimate the immediate economic impact from the quake.
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