The economic cost of Hurricane Irma could rise as high as $300bn (£227bn) as the storm lashes Florida, damaging homes, businesses and key crops including orange groves.
Analysts said about $2tn of property lay in the storm’s path, and also pointed to the potential impact on US food prices. Florida is the second-largest produce grower in the US and the world’s second-largest producer of orange juice, reports The Guardian.
Torsten Jeworrek, a member of the board of the German reinsurance giant Munich Re, said on Sunday that Irma was “a major event for Florida and also a major event for the insurance industry”.
The hurricane has already unsettled the financial markets, sending insurance stocks falling and orange juice futures surging last week. The price of contracts for November deliveries of frozen orange juice concentrate spiked as investors feared the worst after the destruction Irma wrought in the Caribbean.
Barrie Cornes, an analyst at the stockbroker Panmure Gordon, put the overall economic cost at $300bn, with insurance firms potentially on the hook for between $100bn and $150bn when the clean-up operation gets under way.
Florida also grows other important crops including tomatoes, grapefruits, watermelons and sugar cane. Irma could wipe out as much as 20% of the state’s citrus crop, a significant part of its economy, analysts have suggested.
Alan Konn of the Chicago-based commodity trading firm Price Asset Management said: “The damage to the orange crop is twofold, both short-term disruption but also to the extent crops are completely destroyed.”
