Islamabad, 10 January 2023 (GNP): Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Planning, Ahsan Iqbal has stated at the International Conference on Climate Resilient Pakistan, co-arranged by the UN and Pakistan’s government in Geneva that the aggregate cost of last year’s flood crisis was estimated to be estimated at $30.1 billion. He further stated that total expenditure on flood recovery in Pakistan may cross $3 billion by June 2023.
He discussed the plans of Pakistan’s government to use the funds being received in the presence of the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the European Union: “This includes $14.9 billion in damages to infrastructure and $15.2 billion in economic losses. The minimum needs identified for recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction are estimated at $16.3 billion.
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Out of the total $16.3 billion, the government will spend 50% from its own resources, while the government also requested the international community to help the country with $8 billion during the next three years so that the country’s damaged infrastructure can be built in the shortest time period.”
The federal minister of planning and development, Ahsan Iqbal, recalled the damages done by the flood to the country’s infrastructure which included nearly 13,000 kilometers of roads, 400 bridges and several hundred dams, and over 25,000 schools and 1,500 health facilities, destroyed or damaged. A fall in the GDP as a direct consequence of this disaster was calculated to be around 2.2% in the financial year 2022. The agriculture sector faced the largest decline at 0.9 %.
