Turkey-Syria reconstruction costs to come back to ‘billions of dollars,’ World Bank says

Turkish and Syrian reconstruction efforts within the wake of devastating twin earthquakes last week will cost “within the billions of dollars,” based on Ferid Belhaj, World Bank vice chairman for Middle East and North Africa.

The World Bank has already pledged roughly $1.8 billion of funding for Ankara and is pursuing relief aid for Syria, he said, within the wake of the Feb. 6 tragedy that left greater than 35,000 dead.

“On Turkey, the World Bank has committed about $1.8 billion,” he told CNBC’s Hadley Gamble and Dan Murphy on the World Government Summit in Dubai on Monday. “It’s because we had already a portfolio in Turkey, we had projects, and we were capable of repurpose a few of the funding.”

The nongovernmental Turkish Enterprise and Business Confederation estimates that the dual earthquakes led to total losses of nearly $84.1 billion to the Turkish economy in its report assessing the disaster. Comparatively, the 1999 earthquake of Marmara that struck the town of Izmit and killed greater than 17,000 people, resulted in $51.1 billion of losses. The reconstruction costs are set to bolster the woes of the Turkish economy, which has been persistently rattled by hyperinflation, a cost-of-living crisis and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s controversial monetary policies.

“Turkey, , has proven resilient over the past many, a few years. They’ve ups and downs they usually were capable of manage,” Belhaj said, casting a darker shadow over the outlook for sanctions-struck Syria, which the bank is trying to assist through a Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment initiative. It’s carrying out an analogous process in Ukraine.

“Having this tragedy falling on the people of Syria, along with all of the tragedies that these same people have been enduring over the past 10-15 years, is basically terrible,” he stressed, urging global solidarity with each Damascus and Ankara. “Having money going through [U.N. agencies] could be very essential and strategic, and the bank will do its best to be certain that, Turkey, , we’re doing quite a bit already, and in Syria, we are going to play our part.”

Sanctioned and ostracized, Syria has had more limited access to Western support than its NATO-member neighbor. The EU maintains that President Bashar Assad’s Damascus regime only formally requested assistance last Wednesday. The primary U.N. humanitarian package reached Syria on Feb. 9 — when the U.S. also issued an 180-day exemption from its sanctions on Damascus for transactions linked to earthquake relief.

Martin Griffiths, undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator for the U.N., on Sunday acknowledged the coalition’s unsatisfying response in Syria:

“Now we have thus far failed the people in north-west Syria. They rightly feel abandoned. In search of international help that hasn’t arrived,” he said on Twitter.

“My duty and our obligation is to correct this failure as fast as we are able to. That is my focus now.”

Raed al-Saleh, leader of the nongovernmental White Helmets volunteer group that has been assisting rescue efforts primarily in opposition-held territories of Syria, said Sunday on social media that he had met with Griffiths and “we appreciate the apology for the shortcomings & mistakes. Acknowledging that is the start to the correct path.”