著者

小林 博

出版者

島根県立大学

雑誌

総合政策論叢 (ISSN:13463829)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.4, pp.15-35, 2003-02-10

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1. When we look back upon the recent years, the Japanese banks faced many events which were not thought of before such as (1)the collapses of several major banks (2)extremely severe and protracted bad loan problems (3)the consolidation among major banks forming four big financial groups and (4)the entrance to the banking industries by the non-financial corporations and the birth of the internet banks. 2. Public financial institutions which have long been criticized because of their size which is much larger than originally intended and their lending terms which are more favorable for the borrowers than those of commercial banks. Reform efforts of these institutions, especially the Postal Services Agency and the Government Housing Loan Corporation, are underway toward organizational restructuring and downsizing. 3. The results of the fiscal year ending in March 2002 of the Japanese banks deteriorated significantly. Net losses after-tax for all banks increased from 0.1 trillion yen of the previous year to 4.9 trillion yen. Main reasons for this heavy losses are (1)substantially increased credit costs due to the deflationary economic environment and strengthened loan classification by the banks and inspections of the Financial Services Agency (FSA) (2)large amount of write-off of equities under the low price level of the equity market. 4. The special inspection by the FSA had a significant effect on banks' financial results. However, special inspection covered only large, highly-indebted borrowers of the major banks representing only about 4 per cent of their total loans. More comprehensive and strict inspections are needed to recognize the true scale of bad loans of the Japanese banks as a whole. 5. Together with tackling the bad loan problems, the Japanese banks need to improve their profitability which is extremely low compared with those of the major banks of the U.S. and European countries. In order to achieve this goal, the Japanese banks need to make every effort to increase interest earnings and fee incomes. 6. At the end of July of this year, the Japanese government proposed that the government maintain full protection for non-interest bearing settlement account. However, this new proposal seem to serve to further delay the process of recovering by the Japanese banking system by allowing the weak institutions to stay in the market. 7. In summary, solving the bad loan problems, strengthening the profitability and the reform of the public financial institutions are three key factors for the future of the Japanese banks. In addition to the strenuous efforts by the banks themselves, the strong leadership of the Japanese government is inevitable including the overall reform of public financial institutions and the injections of the necessary public fund.