Sixteen of the nation's top 17 banks had a total of 20.03 trillion yen in bad loans at the end of fiscal 1998, according to earnings reports released by Monday.
The tally of nonperforming loans excludes those held by Daiwa Bank, which will release its report today.
All of the 16 logged pretax losses for fiscal 1998, which ended March 31. Sakura Bank incurred the biggest loss among the banks with 754.2 billion yen, while the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi posted the smallest loss of 22.3 billion yen.