Daimler-Benz hopes for Asia

Daimler-Benz hopes for Asia

STUTTGART (DPA): Daimler-Benz expects to raise its Asia- generated revenues from their current level of eight per cent of the total to over 20 per cent within 10 years, company officials said yesterday.

"Today it is about eight per cent of our revenues which are generated in Asia," Daimler-Benz board member Dieter Zetsche told reporters at the group's annual balance sheet press conference in Stuttgart.

Daimler-Benz sold some 39,000 cars in Japan last year, and expects to push the number up to beyond 40,000 this year.

"In the rest of Asia we sold 34,000 (passenger car) units last year. This year we expect to sell 24,000," he said. "The decline is mainly in Indonesia and Malaysia."

Zetsche said only about half of Asian countries were significantly hurt by the crisis, and that the group's sales drop-off in Southeast Asia was off-set by healthy sales in Hong Kong and Taiwan.