Thursday, January 06, 2005

Tsunami aid - is it inflationary?

With the Australian government now committing AUD$1 billion (USD 765 mil) to Indonesia, one wonders whether the influx of money will only lead to inflation or not.

The point is with limited capacity, the affected countries can't really produce enough building materials to get the people's lives back on track.

Surely there should be some monies set aside for other ways of helping out:

a) people are going to need places to live in: use funds to license manufacturing technology or designs from larger companies (like James Hardie) so that houses can be constructed cheaply.

b) use innovative building materials: fund architects to design new housing out of cheap, new lightweight materials.

c) fishermen are going to need boats: what sort of engineering help can we provide here?

d) what about feed stocks: have the breeding places been destroyed?


Postscript (7 Jan):

Looks like the Australian Department of Fisheries is going to be helping out.

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