The haze affected the economy of Indonesia and other countries in various ways. With the reduction in visibility, all forms of traffic were restricted. Tourism decrease as the loss of scenic view means that tourist is less likely to visit. Industrial activity was affected as well when the health of the workers is affected by the haze, this cause productivity of companies to decrease. On top of that, the haze hampers people’s recreation ability like shopping or dining at restaurant which decrease the revenues of business as well. An estimated of US$1 billion was attributed to haze related damages for Indonesia alone and US$0.4 billion for Malaysia and Singapore. The total cost of the damages and the Southeast Asian haze was estimated to be about US$9 billion.

Neighboring country: Singapore

According to a research published in 2002, the 1997 haze caused great monetary losses for Singapore. The total cost estimated for Singapore was about US$163.5 to US$286.2 million. The table below shows how these cost is broken down and the greatest cost came from the lost in tourism. Furthermore, it is likely that all these cost is an underestimation as not everything is accounted for. For example, we can also see that some items like the loss of biodiversity and loss in local business is hard to quantified and assign a monetary value to it.

Table extracted from: Quah, E. (2002). Transboundary Pollution in Southeast Asia: The Indonesian Fires. World Development, 30(3), 429.