The scale of devastation in Haiti is far worse than in Asia after the 2004 tsunami, a study says, estimating the cost of last month's earthquake at up to $US14 billion ($15.5 billion).
The report, released by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), raised the possibility that the quake could be the most destructive disaster in modern history.
Its stark assessment comes as Port-au-Prince remains in ruins more than one month after the quake, while the bodies of more than 200,000 dead pile up in mass graves outside the capital.
The study's release coincided with what would normally be Haiti's annual carnival, an explosion of pulsing music and colourful parades.
But this year the events have been cancelled as no-one is in the mood to party.
The preliminary IDB report estimated the damage between $US8 billion and $US14 billion, in what was already the poorest country in the Americas before the catastrophe.
Factoring in Haiti's population and economic output, the upper estimate would make it the most destructive natural disaster in modern history, the bank said.
"Indeed, in this respect the Haiti earthquake was vastly more destructive than the Indonesian tsunami of 2004 and the cyclone that hit Myanmar [Burma] in 2008," an IDB statement said.
"It caused five times more deaths per million inhabitants than the second-ranking natural killer, the 1972 earthquake in Nicaragua."
Haiti officials say more than 217,000 people were killed in the quake, or about 2.4 per cent of the country's population of 9 million.
The $US14 billion figure is the Washington-based bank's upper estimate for the cost of reconstructing homes, schools, streets and other infrastructure in Haiti following the January 12 quake.
The IDB said a more detailed accounting of the situation would come in the following months but that its preliminary study showed the reconstruction cost was likely to be far higher than anticipated.