Nearly half of the approximately 270 billion yen in Japan's outstanding official yen loans to Myanmar have gone sour.

As of March 31, 1999, the final day of fiscal 1998, outstanding yen loans to developing countries totaled 9.8 trillion yen, of which 272.5 billion yen was being held by Myanmar, according to the Japan Bank for International Cooperation.

Of the total at that time, 377.8 billion yen had been in arrears for six months or longer, according to JBIC, a government-affiliated aid organ created in October through the merger of the Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund and Export-Import Bank of Japan.