Ankara - The cost of the earthquake could be unprecedented in Turkey's history, according to government officials.

Turkey's business community yesterday estimated that $20 to $25 billion (about #19 to #24 billion) of financial aid would be needed for the country to recover.

"The disaster will inevitably affect the Turkish economy which had just started to recover from a severe recession," the Turkish association of industry and enterprise TUSIAD said in a statement. The area hit by the earthquake represented 45 per cent of Turkish industrial production.

TUSIAD put at $300 million-a-day losses caused by economic disruption. "Turkey risks suffering yet further if there is no net flow of international aid," the statement added.

Asked to estimate the cost of the earthquake, government spokesman Sukru Sina Gurel, dressed in the black of mourning, told a briefing yesterday: "We are afraid [the cost] could be beyond our initial estimates and beyond what any tragic event in the history of Turkey has unfortunately caused. The magnitude of the tragedy is beyond imagination", he said.