The U.N. Secretary-General was driven down an avenue in Yangon lined with trees uprooted by the cyclone where workers were still shovelling debris into trucks, some three weeks after the storm left nearly 134,000 dead or missing.
"I'm quite confident we will be able to overcome this tragedy," Ban told the trustees of the Shwedagon Pagoda, the Buddhist country's most sacred site. "I've tried to bring a message of hope to your people.
"At the same time, I hope your people and government can coordinate the flow of aid so the aid work can be done in a more systematic and organised way."
Ban has said relief teams had been able to reach only a quarter of those in need after one of the worst cyclones in Asia in decades.
He signed a book of condolences at the foreign ministry and later on Thursday will take a helicopter tour of the stricken villages of the Irrawaddy Delta southwest of the former capital.
The United Nations and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), of which Myanmar is a member, are to convene a donors' pledging conference in Yangon on Sunday.
The government wants more than $11 billion (5.6 billion pounds) in aid, but international donors need access to verify the needs, ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan told Reuters.
"Accessibility is important to guarantee confidence and verify the damage and needs, otherwise confidence during pledging will be affected," he said on Wednesday.
The government's official toll is 77,738 people killed and 55,917 missing. It also estimates the damage to one of Asia's least-developed economies at $10 billion.
