Self-assessed problem loans at the nation's 910 deposit-accepting financial institutions totaled 80.6 trillion yen as of March 31, down slightly from a year earlier, the Financial Supervisory Agency said Friday.

The figure at the end of March 1998 was 81.2 trillion yen. This excluded loans at the now nationalized Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan and Nippon Credit Bank, the agency said. With the inclusion of figures for these banks, the total would have come to 87.3 trillion yen.

Of last March's total, 138 banks accounted for 64.3 trillion yen, while the remaining 16.3 trillion yen was held by 772 small-scale lenders, mainly fund suppliers for local communities and industries.

The nation's 17 major banks accounted for 41.6 trillion yen of the loans. These 17 comprise nine commercial banks with nationwide networks, one long-term credit bank and seven trust banks.

The FSA compiled Friday's data based on the lenders' own assessment of the quality of their outstanding loans and the degree of difficulty they perceive in collecting them.

The financial institutions classified loans into four categories in accordance with FSA standards. Problem loans are defined as those listed in the second, third and fourth categories.

Healthy, or first-category loans, accounted for 613.7 trillion yen of the 694.3 trillion yen in outstanding loans held by the 910 institutions.

Second-category, or doubtful, loans amounted to 76.6 trillion yen, compared with 75.3 trillion yen at the end of March 1998, excluding loans at the two nationalized banks.

Third category, high-risk loans fell to 3.9 trillion yen from 5.8 trillion yen a year earlier. The decline was attributable mainly to a record 13.6 trillion yen in bad-loan writeoffs by the 138 banks in fiscal 1998, which ended March 31, the FSA said.

There was only a marginal amount of irrecoverable loans -- which comprise the fourth category -- because banks, in principle, write off these loans.