SUNS  4319 Monday 7 November 1998

San Jose, Nov 5 (IPS) -- Rebuilding infrastructure and agriculture in a sub-region devastated by its worst hurricane this century will be the focus of a summit Central American presidents will hold in mid-November in Guatemala.

The meeting, to be attended by the presidents of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, will coincide with an official visit French President Jacques Chirac will pay to Guatemala on Nov. 17.

In addition to the French President, a number of special guests have been invited to the Nov. 17 summit, including representatives of the Inter-American Development Bank, International Monetary Fund, UN Development Programme and other institutions able to help in the reconstruction.

"We want them to hear the presidents' report and plans to restore the damaged infrastructure," Vilma Ibarra, press officer of the Costa Rican Foreign Ministry, told IPS. "We want them to see the magnitude of the tragedy with their own eyes."

Hurricane Mitch, which smashed into Central America last week and early this week, caused the death or disappearance of an estimated 23,000 people. Hundreds of thousands are homeless and great damage has been done to infrastructure and key export crops - bananas and coffee.

The US TNCs that control the Central American banana sector estimate their losses at more than $100 million.

Central America's coffee growers, who had expected to produce 9.2 million 60-kg bags in the 1998-1999 season, have also incurred heavy losses. According to Guillermo Canet, executive director of the Costa Rica Coffee Institute (ICAFE), most of the sub-region's coffee is produced by small farmers so the negative social effect will be tremendous.

Canet said preliminary estimates put the damage in just two major coffee-growing areas in Costa Rica at 120,000 forty-six-kilogramme bags or 5,520 tonnes. However, roads and bridges took a pounding and that could increase the losses since coffee beans ferment and become useless
if they are not transported to the factory immediately after being harvested.

Coffee is the number one export crop in Nicaragua, which lost 30% of its harvest of the commodity, while losses in the sugar cane, bananas, cereals and livestock sectors have been estimated at more than $50 million. Around 42 bridges were totally destroyed and another 29 were badly damaged as were thousands of kilometres of roads.

Honduras was the country hardest hit by Hurricane Mitch, which put paid to its hopes to produce four million bags of coffee in 1998-1999. According to Honduran officials, two-thirds of the harvest has been lost to the hurricane, which damaged 70% of productive land there. As many as two million of the 5.8 million Hondurans lost their homes and more than 83 bridges were destroyed in the country.

Finance Minister Gabriela Nunez said Wednesday that, according to preliminary figures, it would take two billion dollars to rebuild the country. "I do not know where we are going to find it because we are an economy in ruins," she said.