Actuality

The Report indicated that the total damage and loss due to this natural disaster in all sectors amounted to 1.53 billion EUR, out of which direct damage accounted for 870.1 million EUR while the losses accounted for 661.9 million EUR. The total amount for damage applies to all sectors, including the houses, educational institutions, roads, railroad, manufacturing sector and agricultural products. According to the presented Report the most severely hit areas are mining and energy, housing, agriculture and trade.

According to Mr Blagojevic, the plan remains the same as it was a month ago – all those who lost their homes will get houses and the first tenants will move in at mid-August. He added that the European Union would be the most important partner in reconstruction.

He emphasized that he expected the law on reconstruction to be adopted the following week and that work would start simultaneously on the defence programme.

He invited the municipalities to submit the list i.e. the reports on categorization of damage and number of persons in need of assistance by Monday, and all those who do not submit them would not be included in the calculation.

He noted that 43 countries took part at the preliminary conference in Paris and that the following week they would announce the amount of assistance they were prepared to allocate for Serbia.

Mr Blagojevic underlined that the energy sector had suffered great damage and that over 210 million EUR was needed just for remediation.

“Floods and landslides caused total destruction of over 400 housing units while over 17,000 flats and housing units were partially damaged”, said Blagojevic. The damage in the housing sector is estimated at 227 million EUR.

As for health, 74 health protection facilities including dispensaries, primary health centres and clinics were damaged while the furniture and medical supplies were destroyed.

In the area of education, 35 preschool institutions, primary and secondary schools suffered damage.

Ana Ilic from the Serbian European Integration Office talked about the assistance of international community and emphasized that the EU is the most important partner and that so far, we may expect 30 million EUR from the redirected funds. She also said that assistance would be allocated for housing and direct support to farmers and that we were now in the phase of reprogramming 50 million EUR from IPA funds for 2014.

She said that there were ongoing talks with bilateral partners such as Germany, Sweden and Norway.

Mr Blagojevic said on the subject that specific information were announced that day and that earlier data were just guesses.

The Report on the Needs Assessment for Remediation and Reconstruction of Flood Affected Areas will be presented at the Donor Conference in Brussels on 16 July.