It has been 40 days since the earthquakes that occurred in a row on February 6th. While more than 48 thousand people lost their lives due to the disaster, more than 100 thousand buildings were destroyed.
While the policies of the government during the earthquake continued to be discussed, the costs of the earthquake disaster began to emerge.
Onur Erkan Yıldız, who studied the economic cost of the earthquake, shared the results of the research with our newspaper.
After the economic crisis that has been going on for about two years, the economic cost of the Maraş-centered earthquakes, which affected 11 provinces and caused great destruction, began to emerge.
While 40 days have passed since the disaster, which affected more than 13 million people, economist Erkan Onur Yıldız, based on titles such as the reconstruction of cities, infrastructure works, economic support given to earthquake victims and the place of 11 provinces in GDP.
"An average of 684 billion TL of housing and infrastructure, 44 billion of family and rental support, an average of 25 billion dollars is the loss of GDP due to the earthquake. In other words, we are faced with an earthquake damage of 63 billion 518 million dollars in total," Yıldız said.
Speaking about the country's economy before the disaster, Yıldız said, "Before the earthquake, our economy was already in a heavy bottleneck. We can even understand this from market prices. Inflation seriously puts pressure on the country's economy. Even on the basis of Turkish Lira, Turkey has become a very expensive country. We earn TL, we spend in dollars, because prices increase in dollars. We are a country that has fallen seriously behind in the world in terms of purchasing power."
EARTHQUAKE'S FIRST LIABILITY ON THE ECONOMY 684 BILLION TL
Stating that he used the data announced by the public while calculating the cost of the earthquake, Yıldız stated that the figures mentioned are average and estimated values.
"I have calculated the cost of 600 thousand new houses as 100 square meters for each house and the amount we come across is 360 billion Turkish Liras. 44 billion TL for the reconstruction or repair of around 220 thousand houses. Resettlement and infrastructure costs are 160 billion TL. It creates a liability of 120 billion liras for debris removal operations. If we look at the total average cost, this is the first obligation that the Maraş earthquakes will create directly on the country's economy; Equivalent to 684 billion TL," Yıldız added.