Finance Secretary P. B. Jayasundera said about 20,000 homes out of the 98,525 that were destroyed or partially damaged had been rebuilt through state or private help.

"There have been several constraints. The local capacity constraint. The construction industry capacity... and the lack of labour and materials," Jayasundera said at the launch of a report card on reconstruction.

However, he said he expected the reconstruction efforts to accelerate next year as most of the challenges were being overcome.

According to initial official estimates, the December 26 tsunami disaster killed some 31,000 people and displaced one million in Sri Lanka.

However, Jayasundera admitted Saturday they were yet to reconcile the death tolls issued by different arms of the government with figures ranging from 17,500 to 41,000 dead.

"We should be able to reconcile these figures and we will get back with the numbers later," he told reporters. The government has made similar promises in the past but has yet to come up with an authoritative toll.

The loss of infrastructure was estimated at 900 million dollars and the country's total reconstruction and rehabilitation needs were placed at 2.2 billion dollars.

The government has said it received 3.2 billion dollars in aid pledges by international donors.

The joint report card by the government and its key donors noted that co-ordination between state and non-governmental agencies was itself a huge challenge.

A private think tank had earlier asked the government to reign in the private charities which often worked at cross purposes and competed with each other for media attention and pushed wages artificially high.

"The sheer number of actors and the size of the reconstruction needs have made co-ordination a huge challenge, especially between state and non-state actors," the report said.

Officials said more than 350 private charities have been operating in Sri Lanka since the tsunami.

"With the tsunami reconstruction now entering its second and arguably more difficult year, it is possible to learn lessons from the past year's achievements and shortcomings," the report said.

Official figures show that Sri Lanka has utilised less than one tenth of loans and a quarter of the grants offered by foreign donors after the disaster.

Director general of state accounts P. A. Pematilaka said last week the island had drawn only 393.7 million dollars, or 25 percent of the 1,562.9 billion dollars committed for tsunami reconstruction by foreign donors.

Of the 700.3 million dollars made available to the country by way of concessionary loans, only 66.66 million dollars, or less than 10 percent of the available funds, had been drawn, he said.

Sri Lanka is also battling corruption and inefficiencies that are hampering the distribution of the billions of dollars pledged, the country's auditor general said in a recent report tabled in parliament.

Auditor General Sarath Mayadunne said in the report that continuous project delays are costing millions of dollars.

President Mahinda Rajapakse, who came to power after November 17 elections, set up a new authority to co-ordinate all tsunami-related relief operations of the government. It is expected to be launched Monday, the anniversary of the disaster.

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