Port-au-Prince.– The toll in hurricanes and tropical storms that hit Haiti in the recent past has risen to 426, besides causing extensive damage to the economy, officials said, calling upon donor nations to live up to their promised aid.

Some 800,000 of Haiti's 8.5 million people have been affected by flooding and mudslides caused by the storms, Interior Minister Paul Antoine Bien-Aime told reporters on Monday.

President Rene Preval said the economic losses the country sustained "is far beyond its capacity to handle" and the nation needed the international community's assistance to deal with the storms' aftermath.

"The load is heavy," Preval said before travelling to New York to attend the opening of the UN General Assembly. Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis said Haiti, which needed more than $100 million in aid, had only $21 million to deal with the people's most pressing needs.

Preval said he planned to meet several of his counterparts in an effort to try to obtain aid for Haiti.

Total agricultural loss from the storms has been estimated at more than $180 million, the government said. The United Nations and the Haitian government called in recent days for $107.7 million in foreign aid, but just two percent of that amount has been received so far, officials said.