Flood damage to Bosnia estimated at 2 billion euros

Terra Daily via AFP: Bosnia's record floods in May have caused damage estimated at two billion euros ($2.7 billion), seriously affecting the country's economy, an international expert group said on Wednesday.

The cost is equivalent to some 15 percent of Bosnia's 2013 gross domestic product (GDP) and will cause the economy to contract by 1.1 percent this year, compared to the growth of 2.2 percent that had been predicted before the floods, they said.

The estimates were made by experts from the EU, United Nations and World Bank along with local authorities.

It is only an "initial overall assessment of recovery needs" and "more verification work is needed" over the coming fortnight to provide more detailed numbers by sector, said a spokesman of the EU Delegation to Bosnia, Andy McGuffie. An initial estimate by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in late May had put the damage at around 1.3 billion euros ($1.8 billion)....

May 2014 flooding in Bosnia, shot by Dalibor Platenik - Dali, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license