Indonesia's health ministry said today that more than 220,000 are dead or missing from the St Stephen's Day tsunami.
The government had previously estimated a toll of about 182,000 dead and missing.
In releasing the figures, the health ministry also said it would now base its death toll only on bodies buried, under a new tallying system in which none of the missing will be included among the dead for a full year - even though most of them are presumed dead.
The ministry's death toll actually goes down under the new rules - from about 170,000 to just above 96,000 - and means that the two Indonesian agencies still tallying those killed in the disaster now agree on the death toll after having a discrepancy of more than 70,000.
The health ministry listed 96,232 as dead and buried, with 132,197 missing - the same numbers as reported by the government's National Disaster Relief Co-ordinating Board.
It bases its death toll on the number of bodies buried and its missing on those who have yet to report to authorities.
"The minister ordered us to do this to avoid confusion," said Dr Doti Indrasanto, the Health Ministry official in charge of the death count. "People have been complaining."
Until today, the health ministry said there were more than 170,000 dead, and some 12,000 missing. Indrasanto said that most of the 132,000 now listed as missing were unlikely to be alive, but that by law authorities would have to wait at least a year before officially listing them as dead.
AP