UN says recovery of eastern Caribbean could cost $1 billion
The recovery of eastern Caribbean islands hardest hit by recent hurricanes, including Dominica, Barbuda, Turks and Caicos, the British Virgin Islands and Anguilla, could cost up to $1 billion, a senior UN official said Tuesday.
"It's going to be a large-scale rebuilding effort that will take time," said Stephen O'Malley, the UN resident coordinator for Barbados and the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, "and it will be important to do that right."
He told UN correspondents in a phone briefing from Dominica that "we don't have exact figures yet," but for the worst-affected islands the recovery bill will be "half a billion to a billion dollars."
