Colombia's president pegs early quake losses at $9.6 billion

By Nelson Bocanegra and Luis Jaime Acosta

BOGOTA, Aug 17 (Reuters) - The economic losses from the 7.4-magnitude earthquake that rattled Colombia last week are expected to reach 30 trillion pesos ($9.58 billion), President Abelardo De La Espriella said on Monday, in the first official estimate of the disaster's cost.

Speaking from the capital, De La Espriella said the preliminary tally includes roughly 24.5 trillion pesos in property damage and 5.5 trillion pesos tied to infrastructure. The figures, he cautioned, are likely to shift as teams finish assessing affected areas.

"Just imagine the scale of the disaster," De La Espriella said. "This is a preliminary figure that will be adjusted as we obtain more information and as the damage caused by this earthquake is assessed in each of the regions."

The quake struck western Colombia, toppling buildings in Cali, Pereira and smaller towns, and left at least 280 people dead, more than 4,000 injured and 143 missing. The destruction has already strained local emergency services and set off a massive relief effort across the country.

The damage estimate is comparable in scale to other recent disasters in the region, though the economic cost of the June earthquakes in neighboring Venezuela was far higher. According to an initial assessment by the U.N. Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, those quakes caused about $37 billion in damage to housing and infrastructure.

For De La Espriella, who had been in office only days when the quake hit, the crisis is an early test of his leadership. The government now faces the twin challenge of mounting an immediate humanitarian response while laying the groundwork for a reconstruction effort that is expected to last years. The scale of the losses will also put renewed pressure on public finances, making the recovery effort a central issue for his administration in the months ahead.

($1 = 3,131.6400 Colombian pesos)

(Reporting by Luis Jaime Acosta and Nelson Bocanegra; Writing by Natalia Siniawski; Editing by Daina Beth Solomon)