Nonperforming loans at 130 banks at the end of September were down 7.6 percent from the end of March to 22.56 trillion yen on a parent-only basis, the Japanese Bankers Association said Monday.
The amount of bad loans registered in the banks' earnings for the April-September period of fiscal 2004 fell by nearly half from 40.96 trillion yen at the peak in March 2002.
The proportion of nonperforming loans to total loans stood at 5.09 percent at the end of September, down from 8.28 percent at the peak.
The banks recorded 400.6 billion yen in net profit in the first half, against losses of 595.1 billion yen a year earlier.