Pakistan Needs $10b for overcoming the unprecedented challenges of Flood
With the flood devastation in major areas of Pakistan, the country needs an estimated amount of $10 billion in order to repair as well as rebuild infrastructure badly damaged by monsoon rains, Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal said on Tuesday.
He also highlights the fact that It has been observed, that massive damage has been caused to the entire infrastructure, especially in the areas of telecommunications, agriculture, roads, and livelihoods.
Iqbal’s statements are a reiteration of an assessment he shared with Reuters a day earlier, where he said that he believe the actual cost of the damage caused by floods would be “huge”. He stated that “So far, a very early and a preliminary estimate is that it is big, it is higher than $10 billion,”. He added that there was damage to almost nearly one million houses in flood-affected areas.
“People have actually lost their complete livelihoods,” he continued, rating the recent floods worst than those that hit Pakistan in 2010.
The minister said it might take five years to overall rebuild alongside rehabilitate the nation, while in the near term it will be confronted with acute food shortages. As flood has posed unprecedented challenges to agricultural lands.
Pakistan Needs $10b for overcoming unprecedented challenges of Flood
Separately, Finance Minister Miftah Ismail has also given an estimate that the economic impact of floods would be at least $10bn, which is roughly estimated to be three percent of the country’s gross domestic product GDP.
The estimates have come as Pakistan reels from the impact of monsoon rains and unprecedented floods, which have taken over 1,000 lives and have affected more than 33 million people. It accounts for almost 15pc of the country’s 220m population.
Moreover, the country is also facing an imminent food security crisis, with crops that are damaged on a large scale and the way livestock has been affected while most of them swept away in flood water.
