FAW-Toyota cuts production by 8% amid crisis

Shanghai, November 24 (Gasgoo.com) FAW-Toyota said it has cut its production by 7%-8% due to market slowdown amid the global financial crisis, according to Beijing News today.

"We will adjust our production plan according to the market situation," said Satoru Mori, general manager of FAW Toyota Motor Sales Co., at the current Guangzhou Auto Show. FAW-Toyota has cut the production in its factories by 7%-8% this year in response to the market slowdown, he said.

FAW-Toyota, the joint venture between China's FAW and Japanese carmaker Toyota, sold 285,000 cars from January to September, while the carmaker planned to sell 400,000 units for the whole year.

With the markets getting tougher on the global credit crisis, Toyota sales dropped in the America and Europe and it announced to lower its sales target to 9.5 million units, down by 350,000 from the initial target. Meanwhile, Guangzhou Toyota, one of Toyota's Chinese joint ventures, has cut the production by 10%.

According to Mori, FAW-Toyota will make production cuts in the light of market changes but will not cut jobs; instead, the company will have training plans to go through the difficult situation.

"The critical point is that it is not proper to have job reduction now. What's more, I'm pretty sure that the China market will continue rising in the middle- and long-term, so there is no need for job reduction,” Mori said confidently.

During the production cutting period, the company can provide more training opportunities for workers in order to accumulate human resources for the next market surge, he extended.

Mori expects the Chinese market will recover by the second half of 2009 after undergoing the negative growth in the first half.