Hurricane Beryl wipes out a third of Grenada's GDP

 

Grenada Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell says Hurricane Beryl wiped away a third of the country's Gross Domestic Product.

 

Hurricane Beryl devastated the islands of Cariacou and Petit Martinique which form part of Grenada.

 

Prime Minister Mitchell says the final cost of the damage wrought by the hurricane is yet to be determined but the figures are running in the hundreds of millions to at least a billion EC dollars. 

 

"Between agriculture and housing alone, we expect the loss and damage to be somewhere in the region of $600 million, and that is very preliminary estimates. There's been significant damage to the marine environment and the ecosystem in Cariacou. The mangroves have all been badly destroyed.... We are not talking about the water system. We are not talking about the electrical system, the transmission and distribution grid, which was completely destroyed," he asserted. 

 

The Prime Minister added that the fishing sector also suffered significant loss. 

 

"I don't want to simply throw figures out for throwing figures out sake, but our anticipation is that based on preliminary estimates, we expect as much as one third of Grenada's GDP to be the potential loss in damage. To put that in context, we're talking about a billion dollars," Mr. Mitchell disclosed.