Introduction

The tsunami that hit six southern provinces of Thailand on 26 December 2004 is the worst natural disaster Thailand has ever experienced in terms of human tragedy, bringing incalculable misery to affected communities and massive damages to their livelihoods. It killed over 8,000 people and injured thousands more; it damaged or destroyed thousands of houses, other buildings, roads, bridges, and other physical infrastructure. Because the tsunami hit some of Thailand’s most popular beach tourist resorts, a large number of foreign tourists were among the dead and injured.

Total damages were assessed at around $508 million, while losses were estimated at $1,690 million, totalling $2,198 million (1.4 per cent of GDP).¹ The impact on the affected provinces was quite severe: it was assessed to be equivalent to one half of the combined gross provincial product (GPP). In some cases, such as in the case of Phuket, damage and losses equalled 90 per cent of GPP, and in Krabi and Phang Nga, they were around 70 per cent.²

Though the impact of the tsunami was quite severe, after accepting technical assistance at the early stages, Thailand relied mostly on its own resources in coping with the reconstruction tasks, unlike Indonesia and Sri Lanka. Thailand’s experience with the wider economic effects of large-scale reconstruction activities also seems to have differed from that of other affected countries in some respects. Overall Thailand appears to have been more successful than Indonesia and Sri Lanka in overcoming the economic effects of the tsunami. This provides an interesting contrast to the experience of Indonesia and Sri Lanka, which relied heavily on international assistance in their reconstruction efforts.

This paper provides a descriptive and analytical narrative of the post-tsunami relief efforts and reconstruction activities in Thailand. This narrative can facilitate comparative analysis of the experiences of the three countries. The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 describes briefly the damage and costs of the tsunami, followed by an examination of the immediate response after the disaster in Section 3. Section 4 discusses short-term economic effects of the tsunami, and Section 5 discusses the experience of rehabilitation, reconstruction, and recovery. In Section 6 we discuss the issues related to adequacy, efficiency, and effectiveness of aid and assistance. The above discussions are based largely on secondary data. As part of this study, we conducted fieldwork in the tsunami-affected areas and obtained primary data from a sample survey of displaced and non-displaced individuals, visitors, and seven NGOs in the three most severely affected provinces. This information is presented in Section 7. In Section 8, we summarize the main findings of the study and present some policy implications.

Download this Discussion Paper [ PDF 440.1KB| 45 pages ].

Comment(s)

There are [0] comment(s) for this entry. Post a comment.