(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-06-04 20:35

BEIJING - As of Wednesday noon, donations from home and abroad to China's quake-hit regions had hit 43.68 billion yuan (about US$ billion), up 1.32 billion yuan from the previous day, according to the Information Office of the State Council.

So far, 12.67 billion yuan, in cash and relief materials, had been forwarded to the earthquake-affected areas, the office said.

At a press conference on Wednesday, the Ministry of Civil Affairs' disaster relief director Wang Zhenyao admitted "there was still room for improvement" in terms of donation management.

Some of the original charity managerial system could not live up to the current public passion for donation, he said.

The ministry originally proposed in 2006 that by 2010 the country's charity donation could hit 50 billion yuan in both cash and goods, Wang said.

In face of the devastating earthquake, however, both Chinese and the international community had shown great passion in donating.

Some media reports said the 40-billion-yuan-strong in donations was a "quake lake" above the head of the Chinese government, Wang said, regarding it as the public's high request of the ministry's work.

The ministry was making intensified efforts to offer better donation management services, he said, noting the government had issued a series of regulations to regulate every step of the donations.

As of Wednesday noon, the international community had donated or pledged to donate 3.555 billion yuan in cash and 1.154 billion yuan worth of relief materials, the ministry's figures showed.

So far, 258 batches of 388 million yuan in foreign relief supplies had arrived in the quake-hit provinces of Sichuan and Gansu.

The death toll in the 8.0-magnitude earthquake that jolted southwestern Sichuan Province and some other areas on May 12 rose to 69,122 as of Wednesday noon, with 17,991 others missing.