Business

Thursday October 29, 2009

Toyota, Honda cut output to reduce inventories


TOKYO: Toyota Motor Corp and Honda Motor Co, Japan’s two largest carmakers, reduced auto production in September to pare inventories after sales declined.

Global output at Toyota dropped 2.5% from a year earlier to 681,699 vehicles, the company said yesterday. Honda’s production fell 17% to 300,742 while output at Nissan Motor Co, Japan’s third-largest automaker, fell 8.5% to 289,422, the companies said separately.

Toyota and Honda built fewer cars in Japan as exports plunged. The North American market, where Tokyo-based Honda has traditionally earned at least half its operating profit, was recovering more slowly than expected, executive vice-president Koichi Kondo said on Tuesday.

Honda’s US production dropped 11%. The maker of Fit compact cars and Insight hybrids expects North American sales will fall 13% to 1.305 million vehicles in the year ending in March.

Toyota’s overseas output rose 5.7% from a year earlier, when it stopped making Tundra and Sequoia light trucks in the United States for three months.

Honda boosted production in China by 20% as stimulus measures fuelled a surge in automobile demand in the world’s most populous nation. Yokohama-based Nissan’s output in the country rose 63% to a record 55,174.

Toyota made 11% fewer vehicles in Japan even as government rebates and tax cuts helped boost nationwide auto sales 3.5% last month. Honda’s Japan output dropped 34% and Nissan’s fell 16%. — Bloomberg

  • E-mail this story
  • Print this story