While most of the news coverage of the Turkish earthquake has concentrated on the human drama and misery, the market has already begun to focus on the financial implications of the disaster. Interspersed with human interest stories are the economic ones as investors take stock of what it means to Turkey as a borrower on the international capital markets.

According to some recent research, the credit implications for Turkey are not as bad as you might think. The ratings agency, Fitch, reaffirmed its B+ rating for the country - it's more concerned with known political inertia than the current problems. Expectations are for a contraction of around 2 per cent in GDP for 1999 since domestic housing in the earthquake area was much more extensively damaged than industrial buildings, and people are expecting firms to begin production again very soon. Already the prospect of investment inflows due to restoration work has led Fitch to add 1 per cent to its GDP forecasts for 2000. Shortfalls in the current account, which are inevitable since exports have been severely disrupted, are expected to be compensated for to some extent through the various relief packages in place.

Turkey has requested up to $7 billion (#6.7 billion) in aid from various sources which include the EU and the OECD and the parliament has been discussing the imposition of new taxes to finance the necessary spending increase. The targets for taxes are owners of real estate, motor vehicles and cellular phones, all of which, presumably, have now been deemed earthquake-proof. They've also discussed the possibility of issuing bonds to help with financing and are looking for a possible US guarantee on $5 billion plus to make them more attractive to international investors.

While all these discussions and fund raising possibilities are absolutely necessary, new taxes are never welcomed.

The Turkish T-bill market traded better when the government decided that it would delay passing the necessary legislation to raise those taxes until October.

At the moment, January 2000 bills are yielding 103 per cent, and that's down almost four percentage points from earlier in the week. Natural disasters don't come cheap either in economic or human terms.

Meanwhile, the Turkish stock market reopened for business last week and the index rose as people bought cement and construction company stocks. While the overall index was initially up only 1.41 per cent, cement companies were up around 20 per cent. Callous as it seems, they're the best stocks to be buying in Turkey right now. Many other companies have yet to resume production and, even if they've goods to produce, how many people are in a position to buy them?

I guess, though, that even with cellular phones slated for extra taxes, they're still something that people will want to buy too. At least that reduces your dependence on the shaky terrestrial infrastructure.

I'm still useless at using my own mobile phone. Half the time I forget to bring it with me and, when I do, it's usually at the bottom of my bag so I don't hear it ringing. And when, flushed with embarrassment, I realise that the faint chirping sound is actually my phone, I scrabble around in the bag only to find that I have missed the call.

The message is usually from the man asking me what the point is in me having a mobile phone if I don't answer the bloody thing.

At least I don't put potential callers in a queue. The people who ring me have the option of leaving a message and hanging up. But I spent a lot of valuable time last week waiting for my calls to various companies to be "answered in rotation". Knowing your call will be answered in rotation isn't much good unless you know whereabouts in the damned queue you are! If I know that I'm third or fourth, then listening to a tinny version of Greensleeves is almost bearable. If I know that I'm 21st or second, it takes on a whole new meaning. Actually, most companies now use the time you're hanging on to slot in a few well-chosen advertisements which, at that point, are a lot less valuable than they think. On Friday I rang UCI in Coolock to book seats to a film. After holding on for a little over five minutes as I waited to be answered in rotation the line just disconnected. I was faced with the choice of going to the back of the indeterminately long queue, or taking pot-luck and arriving at the cinema without booking.

I decided to have one more go at the phone, eventually got answered and the (very helpful) person at the other end told me that they weren't very busy and there was absolutely no need to book. So why did I spend so long hanging on? In financial markets, phones are answered almost instantly. Nobody will hang on for a price while you play them your latest jingle or, if you're more upmarket, a couple of bars of the Four Seasons.

Thankfully, the summer is now over for financial markets and nobody will be too sorry to see the end of August which started off fairly busy but grew duller and duller as the month progressed. Much of the talk as we move towards the final quarter of the year is of Y2K and its potential impact. Many corporate customers are worried about possible difficulties in raising cash as we approach year end and there has been a deluge of borrowers coming to the capital markets to tie up their long-term borrowing requirements. This slew of paper for investors to look at has made them, in turn, more choosy. Borrowers are having to pay a little more to get their issues away while investors know that spreads are wide but are holding fire until they see something they really like.

Meanwhile, I received my household insurance renewal notice, complete with warnings that the company would not be responsible for equipment failure due to Y2K. The only thing that really matters is the video but since I'm completely unable to programme it anyway, it'll just make its own choice about what to record as usual. Normally I manage to record Sky News no matter what else I think I'm taping. Naturally, though, when I tried to record a particular slice of Sky News last week, I recorded some turn-of-the-century made-for-TV movie. Maybe the video is practising for when it thinks it's back in the 1900s . . .

Sheila O'Flanagan is a fixed-income specialist at NCB Stockbrokers