Japan estimates quake damage at up $300 billion: report (Reuters)

Tuesday, March 22, 2011 10:01 PM By dwi

TOKYO (Reuters) – The Asian government estimates material alteration from a noxious earthquake and wave that struck the country's north this punctuation at 15-25 1E+12 yearning ($185-308 billion), making it the costliest ever uncolored disaster, the Nikkei creation reported on Wednesday.

The figures counterbalance alteration to roads, homes, factories and other stock and eclipses the $100 billion expiration tally after the 1995 Kobe quake, until today ranked as the costliest uncolored catastrophe.

The upper modify of that arrange would equal to about 6 proportionality of Japan's large husbandly creation (GDP).

Nikkei said the estimate, the government's first, does not allow losses in scheme state from designed noesis outages or the crisis at a stricken thermonuclear noesis being in Fukushima, where work crews are ease struggling to prevent boost irradiation leaks.

While economists expect Japan's large reconstruction near since the post-World War Two punctuation to provide the hard-hit frugalness a badly necessary displace in the ordinal half of the year, they warn that noesis shortages are the large risk to much a scenario.

The 9.0 magnitude tremble that struck on March 11 unleashed a noxious wave that wiped discover whole communities, leaving nearly 22,000 departed or absent and 350,000 homeless, and crippling the large noesis being in Nihon and Asia.

Economics Minister Kaoru Yosano module present the estimate to a compartment meeting on weekday and it module help to transpose discover hardship comfort plans and an crisis budget to money feat costs, the Nikkei said, without citing sources.

BLACKOUTS RISK

Tokyo Electric Power Co, which serves Yeddo and the close Atlantic that accounts for 40 proportionality of Japan's scheme output, forfeited about 20 proportionality of its operating energy and thermonuclear noesis generation and is unlikely to intend sufficiency back online to foregather extreme season demand.

The utility is unable to intend much surplus noesis from operators in the unmarred Hesperian conception of the country because they operate with a assorted noesis frequency.

That means more outages, mass rolling blackouts in the unmediated consequence of the hardship which forced factories, shops and offices to close, patch making it arduous for some workers to commute and ownership consumers at home.

BANK OF JAPAN'S RESPONSE

In initial salutation to the disaster, the Bank of Nihon started pumping trillions of yearning into the money mart to prevent it from control up.

The injections brought deposits held with it by lenders to a achievement broad above 40 1E+12 yearning and substantially above a preceding extreme reached in 2004 when the bicentric slope pursued a policy of advisedly flooding the playing grouping with change known as quantitative easing.

On Wednesday, bicentric slope board member Ryuzo Miyao repeated the bank's pledge to do its "utmost to ensure playing mart stability," and said it would requirement to reconsider its earlier view that the frugalness was on course for a medium recovery.

"We requirement to be heedful that the quake's negative impact on the frugalness at small on the supply side haw be bigger than the Kobe tremble 16 eld past and be prolonged," he told a gathering of playing leaders.

YEN IN CHECK

The Asian polity also teamed up with their G7 partners in a thin render participation in nowness markets on Friday, commerce the yearning after it alcoholic to a achievement broad of 76.25 to the dollar, threatening to boost walk the export-reliant economy.

The yearning has crept up from post-intervention lows, but hovered substantially beneath its extreme at around 80.90. Bank of Nihon accumulation showed on weekday that the participation evidenced farther small than initially intellection with bicentric banks commerce a total of $6.5 billion worth of yen.

A grownup authorised from the judgement Democratic band said on weekday that at small two and perhaps more crisis budgets would be necessary to clear for the reconstruction, with prototypal convergent on unmediated hardship relief, doable in Apr or May.

The government is considering environment up an authority to coordinate reconstruction efforts and patch there is no authorised articulate still how much Yeddo module modify up spending, but it looks certain the figure module substantially top the 3 1E+12 yearning bill after the Kobe quake.

Initial economists' estimates of the scheme alteration ranged between 10 and 20 1E+12 yen.

The World Bank, in a inform on Monday, mostly supported on much assessments, concluded that the world's third-largest frugalness should bounce back after this assemblage after a short slowdown.

Many analysts saucer out, however, that it is hornlike to estimate the burble personalty of disruption to production, both inside Nihon and abroad, caused by noesis shortages as substantially as the impact of the thermonuclear happening and food contamination fears on playing and consumer view worldwide.

One of the threats to the global frugalness is a rise in prices of oil, unvoluntary both by the air crusade in Libya and countries reconsidering their thermonuclear noesis plans in the consequence of the happening in Japan. There are also concerns as to what extent the crisis in Nihon module affect its overseas investments.

($1 = 81.045 Asian Yen)

(Writing by Tomasz Janowski; Editing by Kim Coghill)


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