COLOMBO, Dec. 24 -- Floods and landslides triggered by Cyclone Ditwah have placed around 16% of Sri Lanka's gross domestic product (GDP), equivalent to about US$16 billion, and nearly 374,000 jobs at risk, the International Labour Organization (ILO) warned on Tuesday (23).

In a special brief titled 'Preliminary Employment Assessment of the Impact of Cyclone Ditwah in Sri Lanka', the ILO said the economic shock is highly concentrated geographically, raising the risk of uneven recovery and prolonged local economic disruption unless targeted interventions are implemented.

The assessment, which uses night-time light data to estimate the spatial distribution of GDP, found that flooded and landslide-affected areas account for 16.3%of observed...