Balkans Flooding: Recovering From Catastrophe Will Cost Billions

http://www.weather.com/safety/floods/balkans-flooding-bosnia-serbia-croatia-belgrade-20140519

May 22, 2014

Bosnia and Serbia could be saddled with several billions in recovery costs from the record flooding of the past week, but neither country has the available funds.

There are no official damage totals yet, but the Raiffeisen Investment Group said in a note that preliminary estimates for Bosnia alone are at about 1.3 billion Euros, or $1.8 billion. Serbia's flood damage has been estimated as high as 1.5 billion Euros ($2 billion).

Bakir Izetbegovic, Bosnian president, confirmed the damage would reach into the billions.

Both countries already have opened negotiations with the European Union to support reconstruction efforts. Separately, Bosnia's Serb region has opened talks with its ally Russia.

The flooding affected 40 percent of Bosnia, Foreign Minister Zlatko Lagumdzija said. It wrecked the main agriculture industry in the northern flatlands, wiping out infrastructure, farms, buildings and homes. One quarter of the country's 4 million people have been affected by the six days of floods and 2,100 landslides.

"This country has not experienced such a natural cataclysm ever," Lagumdzija said Wednesday.

The flooding has led to at least 51 deaths: 27 in Serbia, 22 in Bosnia, and two in Croatia.

Serbia's minister for construction, transportation and infrastructure, Zorana Mihajlovic, said 3,500 kilometers (2,200 miles) of roads have been destroyed or damaged and 30 percent of railway lines are closed.

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Bosnia has one of the weakest economies in Europe and an unemployment rate of up to 44 percent. Almost no one has property insurance, meaning many residents lost virtually everything.

On Wednesday, a mine exploded near the northern village of Cerik, where the flooding had moved one of the more than 9,000 minefields left over from Bosnia's 1992-95 war. Nobody was hurt.

Serbia, like much of the Balkans, is poor. The country's economy has failed to recover fully following the wars and international sanctions in the 1990s, and also is hobbled by mismanagement and corruption. The unemployment rate officially stands at 20 percent but is much higher in reality.

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