Acceso en línea sin restricciones

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has made this assessment at the request of the Government of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas and with the financial and technical support of the Inter American Development Bank (IDB), in order to provide the necessary quantitative assessment to determine the country's needs in the light of its request for access to the Bank's Immediate Response Facility. The assessment was made following the standard ECLAC methodology for the socioeconomic and environmental assessment of disasters (ECLAC, 2004), subject to the availability of information. The mission comprised two ECLAC officials: Ricardo Zapata-Marti, Focal Point for Disaster Assessment as coordinator, and Oliver Paddison, economic affairs officer at the Subregional Headquarters for the Caribbean, who undertook the macroeconomic analysis. On behalf of the IDB, Iwan P. Sewberath Misser assumed coordination. Officials from the bank's country office involved were Jorge E. Torres (social sectors), Colin Forsythe (infrastructure and utilities), and Graham Williams (economic analysis). This report provides a brief description of the event, on the basis of the meteorological data provided by the Government and information from the Miami based National Hurricane Centre of the Untied States, and describes summarily the population affected and emergency relief operations. It proceeds to describe the direct damage and indirect losses on a sector-by-sector basis and the report is organized in three categories: social sectors (including housing, health, education and social services); infrastructure (namely roads and works and utilities); and economic activities (namely agriculture, commerce and tourism). On the basis of these damages and losses and with the figures of expected performance provided by the Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance, an overall macroeconomic impact is presented, which leads to the relevant conclusion that the event exceeds the government's capacity to face the rehabilitation/restoration and, furthermore, the reconstruction investments needed on its own. Additional, external and private resources will be needed and the recourse to immediate relief and emergency facilities such as the one the IDB can offer are essential for the country not to be set back in its growth path. Español