Nepal's disaster management agency said on Monday that the death toll from flash floods in the country had risen to 626, with 2,426 people still missing, the Associated Press reported.
The agency said search and rescue operations on the Nepal-China border had entered their fourth day.
The agency's previous figures had put the number of dead at 616 and the number of missing at 1,924.
Separately, China reported seven deaths and 554 missing in the Tibet Autonomous Region.
Nepal's Finance Minister Swarnim Wagle estimated that the country could need between $4 billion and $5 billion to recover from the disaster – an amount that is about a tenth of the size of the national economy. He told Reuters that the estimate was preliminary and approximate.
The minister did not explain why the recovery bill is expected to be less than the $9 billion spent after the 7.8-magnitude earthquake in 2015, Nepal’s worst disaster on record. That killed nearly 9,000 people, destroyed more than half a million homes and cost about a third of the national economy.
The floods are expected to deal a serious blow to an economy that relies on remittances, tourism and hydroelectric power. The disaster has affected power projects that account for more than 12 percent of the country’s electricity generation capacity.