(VOVworld) - The economic cost of disasters across the world dropped in 2015 to around USD 85 billion from USD 113 million last year, reinsurance firm Swiss Re said on Saturday. 

Many houses were destroyed in the earthquake in Kathmandu, Nepal on April 27 (Photo: AFP)

According to the firm, the cost of natural disasters alone accounted for USD 74 billion of this year's total. The industrial disaster in Tianjin in northeastern China, where massive explosions at a hazardous goods storage firm on August 12 killed 161 people, is estimated to have been the year's costliest catastrophe, with insurers covering more than USD 2 billion of the damage. The Nepal earthquake, which killed 9,000 people and destroyed 500,000 homes had an economic cost of more than USD 6 billion, but insurers had to pay out just USD 160 million. More than 3,000 people died in India and Pakistan when temperatures soared above 48 degrees Celsius, the reinsurer said.