Jan. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Indonesia's death toll from the Dec. 26 earthquake and tsunami is more than 172,000, almost 50 percent higher than the previous official count, according to the country's Home Affairs Ministry.

In Aceh province, the estimated number of dead is 172,161, Heri Purnomo, a spokesman for the ministry said today in Jakarta. Earlier this week, the Health Ministry said the toll was 115,229. As many as four agencies or ministries are counting the dead, giving conflicting figures almost four weeks after the disaster.

``You can see from this the Indonesia government doesn't have its act together,'' Bruce Gale, Singapore-based political risk analyst with Hill & Associates said.

The revised Indonesian toll makes it the worst tsunami disaster in recorded history, the U.S. Geological Survey said on its Web site. More than 240,000 people are dead or missing in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and eight other countries that were inundated by the tsunami.

On Jan. 18, the Indonesian government said it halted counting the dead, before saying yesterday the National Coordination Agency for Disaster Relief will be the sole source for the death toll. Bakornas, as it is called, said in a statement yesterday 90,000 have been buried with more than 132,000 still missing.

According to the Social Affairs Ministry 110,229 people are dead and 12,070 missing, spokesman Johni Masomba said.

Lacking Coordination

The Home Affairs ministry is the only agency in charge of counting the dead, Purnomo said. ``The Social Affairs Ministry is in charge of evacuation matters.''

The home ministry may be double counting the dead, Masomba at the Social Affairs Ministry said when asked about the differing numbers.

``The problem here is since 1998 we have had a weak series of governments which let the respective ministries go their own way and there hasn't been much coordination or communication,'' Gale said in a telephone interview.

Indonesia ended more than three decades of military dictatorship in May 1998 under President Suharto, holding its first democratic election in 1999, followed by the first elections for parliament members and the president in 2004.

``On the ground the only viable institution of governance is still basically the military,'' Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono said in an interview on Jan. 18. ``The civil government is still very weak and even our friends in civil society are still largely disjointed and disorganized, if not in a mess.''

Fighting Rebels

Aceh was closest to the epicenter of the magnitude-9 earthquake that produced the tsunami. The government has been fighting a separatist rebellion in Aceh province since 1976.

The province, which has strategic importance as the gateway to the Strait of Malacca, is resource-rich with natural gas, oil and timber. The Strait of Malacca is one of the busiest sea lanes in the world with 40 percent of world trade passing through the waterway.

The Indonesian government said residents of Aceh province, the area worst hit by the Dec. 26 tsunami, will have a say in how reconstruction should be carried out, as it attempts to show it is serious about ending a separatist rebellion there.

``It not just a matter of rebuilding the damage,'' Planning Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati yesterday told a meeting of representatives of 21 countries and international lending institutions in Jakarta. The government is also trying ``to design this process as a reconciliation process.''

The government has begun inviting suggestions from Acehnese residents on how the objectives of rebuilding and reconciliation can be achieved at the same time, she said.

Indonesia will receive about half or $474 million of the $977 million requested by the United Nations for the 12 countries affected by the tsunami.

To contact the reporter on this story: Wahyudi Soeriaatmadja in Jakarta wahyudi@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: January 20, 2005 02:22 EST