Manila — About 300,000 Indonesian survivors were
impoverished after a deadly earthquake struck the
center of densely populated Java island last
month, an Asian Development Bank (ADB) study says.

"The earthquake is estimated to have impoverished
an additional 67,000 households and increased the
poverty head count ratio by 1.6 percent in the
affected areas," the report said.

Aid agencies taking part in the relief effort in
Central Java and Yogyakarta provinces have
estimated the average household in the area at
five persons.

The ADB report said preliminary estimates
suggested the reduced economic activity would lead
to 130,000 lost jobs, or about four percent of
total employment in the affected areas. "Close to
70,000 people may have lost their primary source
of income" as a direct result of the quake, it
said.

It added that the pace of jobs recovery "will
depend on the evolution of the reconstruction
effort,“noting that the hard-hit areas were”fiscally poor and depend heavily on the central
government’s general allocation transfer".

The quake is expected to have a “minor effect” on
the national economy with a 0.1 percent drop in
gross domestic product ( GDP), it said, noting
that the 11 affected districts combined accounted
for just 2.2 percent of Indonesia’s GDP.

"The main impact on the national economy is likely
to come from the cost of the reconstruction effort
and its implications on national government
finances," it said. The report said the affected
region’s economic growth was expected to drop to
1.3 percent this year and 4.2 percent in 2007.

It said the pre-quake gross regional domestic
product growth for the affected districts as a
whole had been put at 5.5 percent for both 2006
and 2007.