Tropical Storm Nicole - Planning Institute of Jamaica

Damage to the Electricity and Telecommunications sub industries amounted to $92.4
million and $136.9 million, respectively. The damage to the electricity industry, due mainly
to broken poles and dislocated lines, impacted the electricity distribution system resulting in
power outages. However, losses that should emanate from these outages were not
established, but are expected to be minimal due to the relatively quick restoration of power,
especially to large users.
An approximate cost of $270.0 million was recorded for damage to Water Supply and
Sanitation. This figure mainly reflected damage to the water and sanitation infrastructure in
urban areas as assessment of damage to rural and remote infrastructure and associated losses
were still outstanding.
With regard to the Productive sector, Domestic Agricultural Crops, Livestock and
Greenhouse/Protective cultivation sustained the most damage, amounting to $576.5 million.
A further $22.0 million in loss was incurred and was related to relief assistance to the
agriculture sector. The Tourism industry recorded damage of $88.3 million and losses of
76.2 million.
Emergency Operations to include Parish Council drainage cleaning, vector control activities
and ODPEM Relief supplies and Red Cross activities incurred a cost of $48.9 million.
Projected Economic Performance in 2010 prior to TS Nicole
General Trends
Economic activity declined by 3.0 per cent in 2009. Despite this, a turnaround was
projected for 2010 and the economy was expected to grow by 0.3 per cent. However, the
fallout associated with the West Kingston events 21 in May, was estimated to detract 0.4
percentage point from growth resulting in a revised GDP out-turn of -0.1 per cent.
Subsequently, new data revealed a worsening of this position, thus the GDP figure was
further revised downwards to -0.5 per cent, reflecting: 1) higher than anticipated
21 A cost of approximately $22.5 billion, representing 2.1 per cent of 2009 current GDP, was incurred.
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