An Indian UN peacekeeper stands guard as Haitians wait to enter a bank in Port-au-Prince on Jan. 23, 2010. (Photo by Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images)

More than two months after the quake, Haitians abroad are sending more money home. Just how much more is up for debate.

While official numbers aren't available yet, a quick survey of the Treasury Department, for-profit wire services and micro-finance NGOs suggests that remittances are at least back to pre-earthquake levels and likely higher.

Even before the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake, remittances were a big part of Haiti's economy. In 2009, $1.64 billion was sent to Haiti from abroad, constituting 26 percent of the country's GDP, according to the Inter-American Development Bank. In the wake of the disaster, development experts predicted that the Haitian Diaspora would start sending more money home to speed up the recovery.

Fonkoze, a micro-finance NGO serving Haiti, has seen remittances more than double since the disaster. In 2009, Fonkoze averaged 11,322 transfers per month totaling more than $3.9 million. In January, there were 13,694 transfers totaling more than $4.9 million (despite the fact that six of Fonkoze's 42 branches were inoperable after the quake). In February, they processed 23,849 transfers for more than $8.8 million.

Fonkoze has also seen the average size of its remittances increase as well, from a $350 average in 2009 to a $372 average in February.

The feds are also convinced that remittances have "increased significantly." That's what Nancy Lee, the Treasury Department's deputy assistant secretary for the Western Hemisphere, told the House Financial Services Subcommittee on International Monetary Policy and Trade on March 4.

Facilitating the flow of remittances has been a focus of American relief efforts. The Treasury Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the military dispersed $2 million in cash for Fonkoze within days of the earthquake to ten locations around Port-au-Prince so the nonprofit would have cash on hand to distribute.

President Obama has also granted 18-month visas to Haitians living in the U.S. illegally. The administration hopes that these estimated 100,000 Haitians will now send more money home.

Not everyone is seeing the same jump in remittances. MoneyGram International saw a huge drop in cash transfers for the two weeks after the earthquake, said Lynda Michielutti, director of corporate communications, because just 40 of MoneyGram's 115 Haiti locations in Haiti were functioning after the quake. As more offices came online, MoneyGram saw a surge in late January and early February. But transfers have leveled off in recent weeks, and now the flow of remittances is now at pre-earthquake levels. (Michielutti declined to give specific numbers, saying the information was proprietary.)

MoneyGram still has only 75 locations up and running, which means more money is flowing through each location on average. But Michielutti noted that many customers are just walking to other MoneyGram branches farther from home, meaning that the average number of transfers per customer hasn't increased significantly.

Western Union's affiliates have been hard hit as well. As of March 1, just 205 of the company's more than 400 offices in Haiti are open for business. A Western Union spokesman declined to say whether transfers were up or down after the quake, citing the data's proprietary nature.

A more modest increase in remittances would square with the research of Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes, an economics professor at San Diego State University. She has studied the impact of remittances on "small island developing states" (see: Haiti) after major natural disasters.

Amuedo-Dorantes' research has found that remittances drop off briefly in the immediate aftermath as banking and mail services are interrupted, but that even after the banking infrastructure is restored, remittances don't skyrocket. They increase slightly for a year or two before settling close to pre-disaster levels.

"They tend to be quite stable flows," Amuedo-Dorantes told NationalJournal.com in January.

Official remittance figures won't be available for months. The Central Bank of Haiti typically takes "at least three to four months to review their numbers, and [it] is not certain how they are coping with the recovery," according to Manuel Orozco, who studies remittances at the Inter-American Dialogue.