El Nino caused $20 billion in damage to Asia-Pacific

El Nino caused $20 billion in damage to Asia-Pacific

MANILA (Agencies): The current El Nino is estimated to have
caused in excess of US$20 billion worth of damage to Indonesia,
Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and the Pacific Islands,
according to a report released yesterday by the Asian Development
Bank.

The Asian Development Outlook said this amount was
significantly larger than the damage caused by the 1982-83 El
Nino.

"For countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia and the
Philippines, which were the hardest hit by El Nino, the economic
impact is projected to cause a fall in output of 1 percent in
1998," the report said.

The name El Nino -- Spanish for "the child" -- was bestowed by
Peruvian fishermen because it usually arrived around Christmas
time.

It is a natural climatic phenomenon, caused by a warming of
the surface waters of the eastern Pacific Ocean, that occurs
every two to seven years and lasts up to 18 months.

The 1982-83 El Nino was called the El Nino of the Century and
was blamed for $8 billion in damage and 1,500 deaths worldwide in
severe flooding, destructive waves, drought and storms.

The droughts caused by El Nino resulted in forest fires that
swept across Indonesia between August and October 1997,
destroying millions of hectares of forest and enveloping
Southeast Asia in a poisonous haze.

Asia's battered economies will start to recover next year but
it will take several more before they return to the surging
growth rates that once so entranced the world, the bank said.

And if governments do not sort out their problems now,
particularly with economic reforms, inevitable social turbulence
could turn into political unrest, it warned in its annual
development outlook.

The ADB also said yesterday that Asia's developing countries
must invest heavily in their rapidly growing labor force if they
are to regain the growth momentum stunted by the region's
financial crisis.

"In the absence of adequate investment in human resources,
Asia's developing economies would be seriously hindered in their
efforts to sustain economic growth in an increasingly competitive
and integrated world," the Asian Development 1998 report said.

Cheaper labor from Bangladesh, China, India and Vietnam is
threatening to edge out the so-called Asian miracle economies
from low-end export markets, it said.