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| Thursday, 30 December 2004 |
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Asia quake damage will exceed 10 b euros FRANKFURT, Wednesday (AFP) The damage caused by the waves which swept coastlines in South Asia following a seabed earthquake is likely to exceed 10 billion euros (dollars), an insurance expert said. The expert, Gerhard Berz, works for the world's leading re-insurance company Munich Re. He said: "We don't yet have any reliable figure but my personal impression is that material damage will amount to two digits of billions of euros", in a reference to 10 billion euros. Berz made his remark on the German television channel Deutsche Welle. Munich Re, which carries some of the risk underwritten by insurance companies, publishes annually an authoritative report on natural disasters throughout the world and the damage caused. Earlier the deputy secretary general for humanitarian affairs at the United Nations, Jan Egeland, had estimated that the cost of damage would amount to billions, and probably many billions of dollars. Munich Re said that the effect on its own business of the quake damage, on the basis of available information, would be "less than 100 million euros (135 million dollars)". The company said that therefore there was no reason so far for it to change its forecast that net profit for this year would amount to 1.8-2.0 billion euros". |
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