Bosch says reaches 2006 sales goal

Robert Bosch GmbH met its target to boost 2006 sales by 5 percent to about 43.6 billion euros ($56.45 billion) through organic growth last year, according to the Tuesday edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper.

The report, available on the paper's Web site today, cited company head Franz Fehrenbach as saying in an interview that earnings had gone "a step backwards" at the German car parts maker because of the higher cost of raw materials such as steel, aluminium, nickel and copper.

This development had had an impact of 1 billion euros since 2004, and Bosch was only able to pass on the extra costs to customers to a very small extent, the paper cited Fehrenbach as saying.