MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

World Bank estimates $19.6 billion in earthquake damage in Venezuela

The disaster struck a country with a poverty rate above 76% and an economy that contracted sharply over the past decade, in a period marked by US sanctions

The twin earthquakes that struck northern Venezuela on June 24 caused an estimated $19.6 billion in direct physical damage, according to a preliminary assessment published on Thursday by the World Bank. The figure is equivalent to about 18% of the country's gross domestic product, based on International Monetary Fund data.

The report, produced using the institution's rapid damage estimation methodology, attributes 47% of the losses to residential buildings, 27% to infrastructure, and 26% to non-residential buildings. La Guaira state and the Capital District, which includes Caracas, account for roughly half of the total impact. In La Guaira, the hardest-hit area, the institution estimates that one in five homes was destroyed.

The estimate does not include the costs of rebuilding with structural improvements or of debris removal, which the World Bank says could amount to between two and two and a half times the replacement value, bringing the total bill to close to $50 billion. An early United Nations assessment, released a week after the quakes, had put direct damage at $37 billion.

“This assessment provides the Government of Venezuela and its partners with an early, objective basis for recovery planning,” said Susana Cordeiro Guerra, the institution's vice-president for Latin America and the Caribbean, adding that the earthquakes “have disrupted lives, damaged critical infrastructure, and created new challenges” for the country.

The earthquakes, of magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5, left 5,398 dead and 16,740 injured according to official figures, which authorities present as provisional, while unofficial estimates put the number of missing in the thousands. About 18,000 people remain without housing. It is the deadliest quake recorded in Venezuela since 1812. The United Nations estimates that more than a million people need immediate humanitarian assistance.

The disaster struck a country with a poverty rate above 76% and an economy that contracted sharply over the past decade, in a period marked by US sanctions. The World Bank warned that, at current levels of public and private investment, reconstruction would stretch beyond ten years, with lasting effects on economic activity, and called for a rapid increase in public funding.

The report was published after fourteen US Democratic lawmakers asked President Donald Trump to lift economic sanctions on Venezuela and facilitate the country's access to its frozen assets abroad. A hundred economists signed a request along the same lines. The institution said it is working with the Venezuelan government, the Inter-American Development Bank, and CAF to define additional technical and financial support.