The Financial Services Agency said Friday the value of outstanding nonperforming loans at commercial banks rose sharply to 43.21 trillion yen as of March 31.

The rise in fiscal 2001 was partly due to major banks' stricter assessments of the quality of their loans following the FSA's special bank audits.

The outstanding amount of bad loans for the year, up from 33.63 trillion yen the year before, was the largest since 1998, when the agency started compiling such data, the agency said.