The average price of land facing main streets dropped for the 10th straight year in 2001, falling 6.5 percent to 129,000 yen per sq. meter, the National Tax Agency said Friday.

The margin of decline, based on a survey of some 400,000 locations nationwide by the Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry, widened slightly from the previous year's 6.2 percent. It was the first expansion in three years.

The so-called roadside land price will be used by tax authorities to assess inheritance, gift and landholding taxes for 2002.

Land prices continued to rise at prime locations in big cities, including Tokyo's Ginza shopping district. Land prices also recorded a rise in areas where large-scale redevelopment projects are under way, including Tokyo's Marunouchi business district and an area close to JR Shinagawa Station.

But price declines picked up the pace in 35 prefectures, with the downward slide initially triggered by the burst of the economic bubble in the early 1990s continuing amid the prolonged economic slump.

A plot of land in front of the Kyukyodo stationery store in Ginza continued to be the most expensive in Japan for the 17th straight year, at 12 million yen per sq. meter, up for the second straight year.

The average land price fell by the largest margin in Okayama Prefecture, at 11.7 percent, followed by Gifu, Hyogo and Nagasaki prefectures, all of which saw declines of 10 percent. Tokyo saw land prices fall 3.9 percent on average from a year earlier, with the pace of decline slowing for the third consecutive year.

By region, the decline rate lessened to 5.2 percent from 5.7 percent for the Tokyo area, which includes parts of Chiba, Kanagawa and Saitama prefectures, and from 9.8 percent to 9.4 percent for the Osaka region, comprising key parts of Osaka, Hyogo, Kyoto and Nara prefectures.

But it widened to 7 percent from 4.2 percent in the Nagoya region, comprising central Aichi Prefecture and part of Mie Prefecture. For the rest of Japan, the average rate of decline was 5.7 percent, up from 5.3 percent.

The prices of the most expensive land in prefectural capitals fell in all prefectures except for Tokyo, tumbling by more than 15 percent in 21 cities, up seven from a year earlier.

The margin of decline was less than 5 percent in Sapporo, Nagoya, Osaka, Fukuoka and Naha.