"Total accumulative pledges we have received are 5.827 billion dollars," Aziz told a media briefing after the one-day conference wrapped up.

Of this 3.9 billion dollars was in soft loans and the remaining 1.9 billion dollars was in grants, he said.

"I am fully hopeful this figure will further increase," he said.

Aziz had said earlier, immediately after donor countries and groups had made their pledges, that 5.4 billion dollars had been raised.

The World Bank and the Asian Development Bank pledged one billion dollars each, mostly in the form of loans. The Islamic Development Bank said it would increase its assistance from more than 250 million dollars to more than 501 million dollars.

The single biggest donor country was Saudi Arabia, which pledged a total of 573 million dollars including soft loans, Aziz said.

The United States pledged 510 million dollars, including 156 million dollars already given. Pakistan is a key ally in the US "war on terror".

Among other top contributing countries were Britain, the European Union nations, Japan, Kuwait, Iran and Turkey, the prime minister said.

He said earlier the pledges "will give us more strength to rebuild ... so that the area can be restored quickly".

Pakistan had said it needed 5.2 billion dollars for reconstruction and ongoing relief after the October 8 quake that killed more than 73,000 people and made about three million homeless just before the onset of winter.

The United Nations and aid agencies have warned that thousands more people could die if funding problems disrupt relief operations during the winter in the mountain region, which has already seen the first winter snow falls.

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