Rebuilding after China quake to cost €100bn
The National Development and Reform Commission’s draft rebuilding plan, published this week, includes homes for more than 3 million rural households, as well as about 1 million jobs, the China Daily newspaper reported.
Some 3,400 primary schools need to be rebuilt in Sichuan and neighbouring Gansu and Shaanxi provinces and another 2,600 schools needed to be strengthened, the newspaper reported.
Thousands of children died when their schools collapsed in the earthquake.
Nearly 70,000 people died in the May 12 quake and 5 million were left homeless in three hard-hit provinces.
The quake caused more than $122bn in direct economic losses, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
Sichuan officials have said they want to rebuild communities within three years, and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has said rebuilding in the other two provinces should be complete by 2010.
Soon after the quake, China set up a $10bn reconstruction fund — compared with the $40bn spent on the Olympic Games underway in the capital, Beijing.
The quake threw about 1.4 million farmers into poverty, China Daily reported.
The Chinese government has said it plans no large-scale relocation of people from the quake zone.
