Major banks can maintain sufficient capital-adequacy ratios without public funds, even if 20 troubled borrowers were to fail, Financial Services Minister Hakuo Yanagisawa said Friday.

The Financial Services Agency estimates that large lenders as a whole will maintain a capital-adequacy ratio of 10 percent, above the internationally required 8 percent, Yanagisawa told a Diet panel.

This is so even if the banks cannot recover loan losses -- other than those covered by collateral and loan-loss reserves -- from the collapse of the 20 most vulnerable borrowers, he said.