Japan may need five years to rebuild from the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that has caused up to $237 billion of damage, the World Bank said yesterday. The disaster 11 days ago, which killed more than 8600 people and left more than 13,000 missing, ravaging north-eastern Japan, was likely to shave up to 0.5 percentage points from the country's economic growth this year, the bank indicated.
The impact would be concentrated in the first half of the year, it said. ''Damage to housing and infrastructure has been unprecedented,'' the World Bank said. ''Growth should pick up though in subsequent quarters as reconstruction efforts, which could last five years, accelerate. The bank cited damage estimates of between $124 billion and $237 billion, and cost to private insurers of between $14.1 billion and $33.2 billion.
It said the government would spend $12.1 billion on rebuilding in the current national budget and ''much more'' in the next one.
A short-term drop in consumer demand and manufacturing production would also hurt trade with regional neighbours, the bank said. South Korean electronics companies have seen the price of memory chips from Japan rise 20 per cent because of disrupted production, while Thai car exporters may run out of Japanese parts next month, it said.
Japan's north east, the epicentre of the disaster, is home to ports, steel mills, oil refineries, nuclear power plants and manufacturers of car and electronics components.
Many of those facilities have been damaged, while nationwide power shortages have severely crimped car and electronics production. The US billionaire investor Warren Buffett says that a massive natural disaster would not hamper the future of the Japanese economy and could prompt a new bout of stock buying.
''I'm not looking at Japan's economic future differently from 10 days ago,'' he told reporters in South Korea. ''Extraordinary events offer [a] buying opportunity.''
Australian uranium miners have been urged to consider more forward-sales agreements to secure funding for their projects, in the wake of the Japanese nuclear crisis. The call at the Pay dirt conference in Adelaide yesterday follows a devastating week for uranium stocks.
Edward Cullen in the three Twilight films - is the second richest UK film star under 30, with a total fortune of $50,000,000. Harry Potter’s Daniel Radcliffe at only 21 comes in first , 21, tops the list with $70,000,000 including earnings of $10 million last year. Robert Pattinson is reportedly set to net 2.5 per cent of the next two Twilights’ takings and that could help move him to number 1.
