分析师：海啸对受灾国家经济影响有限
Impact of disaster on region's growth seen as slight
The tsunamis that devastated coastal regions in southern Asia on Sunday will deal a blow to the R#95717 region's tourism industry in the short term but the overall economic impact will be small, according to analysts. “If there was any bright spot in this disaster, it was that it did not destroy any major industrial and port facilities. Most of theareas affected were marginal ones in economic terms,” said Song Seng Wun, regional economist at G.K. Goh, the Singapore securities firm.
Even in the industrial area of Chennai, in south India, port facilities affected by the tsunamis resumed most operations late yesterday, earlier than expected, Bloomberg reported.
Although the epicentre of the earthquake that triggered the tsunamis was near the large Arun liquefied natural gas plant on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, the facility did not suffer any apparent damage, officials said.
Hans Goetti, investment strategist with Citigroup Private Banking in Singapore, said: “I doubt this [disaster] will lead to cuts in overall growth rates, since the damage was largely confined to the tourism industry.”
In Thailand, where tourism accounts for 6 per cent of gross domestic product, the destruction in Phuket and other resorts in the south-west would probably have only a short-term impact on the sector, he said.
“For the Thai tourism industry to suffer a significant blow, tourists would have to avoid all of Thailand for the whole of the next year, and I don't think that's likely to happen,” Mr Goetti added. In fact, spending on the reconstruction of holiday facilities could provide a fillip to the economies of the areas worst affected, helping them to get over any loss in tourism revenues.
Even if Thailand's south makes a slow recovery, the region accounts for only10 per cent of the nation's GDP, said Mr Song of G.K. Goh. Economists in Bangkok predicted that fall-out from the destruction in terms of tourist numbers would be less than that caused by the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome last year, when arrivals fell by 7.4 per cent. Thailand attracts about 12m tourists a year.
In Sri Lanka, the disaster is likely to set back a revival of the tourism industry, which reported a record 500,000 visitors last year in response to a ceasefire in the two-decade civil war between the government and Tamil Tiger rebels.
Transport links from Colombo to beach resorts in the south were heavily damaged and might take up to a year to repair.
Tourism has become a fast-growing sector of the Sri Lankan economy at a time when its mainstay textile industry is threatened by the abolition of international quotas on January 1.
The Maldives may have suffered a severe blow to its key tourism industry, although the extent is uncertain, with reports about damage in the low-lying archipelago still sketchy.
India's main beach attractions, Kerala and Goa on the west coast, escaped the giant waves, while the badly-battered east coast is not a big tourist destination.
John Koldowski, a tourism expert at the Bangkok-based Pacific Asia Travel Association, said however that the region's tourism industry overall should recover much faster than it did from the October 2002 Bali bombings.
The recovery will be tied almost directly to the time it takes to rebuild, and will not be affected by psychological fears, he said.
“If they [hotels] get their room stock open and back on line and everything functioning, it will take months and maybe a year to get back to normal,” he said.
分析师：海啸对受灾国家经济影响有限
分析师们表示，周日冲击东南亚沿海地区的海啸在短期内会打击该地区旅游业，但总体上对经济的影响不大。
新加坡证券公司“吴控股”(G.K. Goh)分析师宋诚焕(Song Seng Wun)表示，如果这次灾难有什么不幸中的万幸，那就是它没有破坏任何主要的工业和港口设施，而且多数受灾地区在经济上的重要性较低。
据彭博社(Bloomberg)报道，即使在印度南部金奈（Chennai，原称“马德拉斯”)的工业区，多数受海啸波及的港口设施昨天晚些时候都已恢复作业，比预期要早。
官员们表示，尽管引发海啸的地震震中靠近印尼苏门答腊岛上的阿伦（Arun）大型液化天然气工厂，但工厂没有遭受明显破坏。
花旗私人银行集团(Citigroup Private Banking)驻新加坡投资策略师汉斯?格蒂(Hans Goetti)表示：“由于灾难造成的损失基本局限在旅游业，因此我觉得这次灾难不会导致整体经济增长率的降低。”
泰国的旅游业占国内生产总值的6%，普济岛和泰国西南部的其它旅游胜地虽然遭到破坏，但可能只会对该产业产生短期冲击。
“泰国旅游业不太可能遭遇重大打击，除非游客明年全年都不来泰国的任何地方，而我认为这是不可能发生的，”格蒂先生补充说。事实上，用于重建旅游设施的支出，可能有助于促进受灾最严重地区的经济，帮助它们克服旅游业收入方面遭受的损失。
