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Toyota’s domestic output to hit three-decade low

TOKYO - Toyota Motor’s domestic production is likely to fall below three million vehicles for the first time in three decades in the current business year as demand slumps, a report said on Tuesday.

Toyota’s output in Japan is seen dropping to about 2.8 million units in the fiscal year which began this month, down more than 30 percent from a record high two years earlier, the Yomiuri Shimbun said without naming its sources.

The last time the company’s output was less than three million was in fiscal 1978, when Toyota produced 2.89 million vehicles.

Toyota sees the three million production level as the minimum necessary to maintain its 69,000 regular employees in Japan, the newspaper noted.

The company has already shed thousands of temporary workers and the daily said pressure would mount for a reduction in the number of the regular workers.

Toyota expects overseas production this year to be about 3.4 million vehicles, bringing its overall production to 6.2 million units, it said.

The automaker’s domestic production has so far been about 8,000 vehicles a day in April, half the level of a year earlier, it said.

A Toyota spokeswoman said the automaker had not yet decided its production plans for this year.

Toyota overtook General Motors last year to become the world’s top-selling automaker, but only because the US giant’s sales fell faster than its own.

Toyota has forecast its first ever loss for the last financial year to March and there is speculation that it may have lost the top seller rank to Germany’s Volkswagen in the first quarter of 2009.