"We're being very careful in assessing the possibility," President Osamu Masuko told Reuters in an interview at the Frankfurt International Motor Show.
"Ideally, we would be able to keep selling imported cars at the current pace," he said.
Mitsubishi Motors signed a non-binding letter of intent with the Russian government last December to consider local assembly of its cars, and has until January to decide.
Masuko said he expected a decision either way to come sooner than December.
Mitsubishi Motors expects its sales in Russia to grow to 100,000 units in the business year to next March, Masuko said, up from 69,700 vehicles last year.
But Masuko said it was unclear whether the carmaker, which only returned to the black in the past business year for the first time in four years, had the resources to set up a manufacturing footprint in Russia -- an unfamiliar market that only recently opened its auto industry to foreign competition.
"If we were a company like Toyota, which has been consistently healthy, we would have a better chance at this type of endeavour," he said. "We're now back on our feet (financially), but we do have to balance our resources wisely."
