“Guarantee rapid and fair compensation” for the damage caused by the violence in New Caledonia. This is what the Minister of Economy and Finance, Bruno Le Maire, promises. This will bring together insurers “next week” with this objective, his office announced this Friday. The amount of economic damage is still being assessed and will be communicated when it is “stabilized and reliable”, according to the same source, while the violence continues, even if the night of Thursday Friday was a little calmer.
However, an initial assessment of the damage has already been carried out by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI) of New Caledonia. The first three nights of riots in New Caledonia caused damage worth 200 million euros, David Guyenne, president of the CCI of New Caledonia, announced to AFP on Thursday. As recalled The echoesthis would already represent more than 2 points of New Caledonia’s annual GDP.
“The CCI did work to assess the damage based on the cost of construction, stock, operation,” said David Guyenne. According to him, 80% to 90% of the distribution circuit (stores, warehouses, wholesalers) in Nouméa have been “annihilated”.
“The magnitude of the impact will be enormous”
“The figures are colossal, the magnitude of the impact will be enormous. The New Caledonian economy is structurally damaged,” said David Guyenne, estimating that “the State will have to intervene”. Nouméa, the capital of New Caledonia, is the heart of the riots affecting the archipelago in the Pacific Ocean. With its 180,000 inhabitants, the agglomeration is by far the most populous in the territory and concentrates most of its wealth and economic activity.
Mimsy Daly, the president of Medef of the archipelago, for her part specified that “more than a hundred businesses are completely destroyed”. “This represents between 1,500 and 2,000 jobs,” she estimated. She spoke of “very gloomy prospects”: “we will have to restart the businesses that are still standing but with what turnover? I don’t know”. “It is more than likely that the damage will amount to hundreds of millions of euros. And I am not talking about the cascading effects that this situation will produce. This is an unprecedented situation for New Caledonia and on the scale of our economy, it’s a catastrophe,” she added from BFM Business.
Around 20,000 jobs threatened?
Concerns are also strong on the side of Xavier Benoit. “We are going to have a stall in the Caledonian economy,” warned the president of the Federation of Caledonian Industries on Thursday on France Inter. “When we have more than 150 businesses that have been destroyed, that is to say burned, looted, this puts the entire New Caledonian economy flat. We have a challenge of attractiveness to be able to rebuild, to bounce back, which is essential,” he noted. The risk is now to see serial failures and liquidations for companies short of cash. Some 20,000 jobs could thus disappear, according to the industrialist.
Thursday, the president of the Southern province and former Secretary of State, Sonia Backès, demanded in a letter to Matignon that France accept the establishment of an “exceptional reconstruction fund” to erase the stigma of three nights of “unbelievable violence”, the cost of which she for her part estimated at 150 million euros.
An “economic crisis unit” set up
These riots come after years of economic difficulties for New Caledonia. The archipelago is already economically exhausted, according to Mimsy Daly. “The economy in New Caledonia was essentially nickel, which represents 20% of private employment, while nickel has been in a deep crisis for seven years. This means that New Caledonia, which is extremely dependent on nickel, has already been in economic crisis for several years. It has few other major sectors of economic development”, analyzes the president of Medef New Caledonia to France Inter. Furthermore, as recalled The echoesthis territory is facing a wave of departures which is straining domestic consumption: New Caledonia has lost 20,000 inhabitants in five years, out of a population of 270,000.
Bruno Le Maire’s announcement comes at the end of a telephone meeting held this Friday morning (Paris time) between the minister, the Minister for Overseas Affairs Marie Guévenoux as well as elected officials and representatives of the economic world of New Caledonia. This exchange allowed the establishment of an “economic crisis unit” bringing together state services, economic players and local elected officials, according to Bruno Le Maire’s office. “This unit will aim to report data quickly and work on the reconstruction and economic recovery of the island,” he added.