Top carmakers upbeat about growth in Asia-Pacific

Top carmakers upbeat about growth in Asia-Pacific

Max Sato, Agence France-Presse, Tokyo

Leaders of the world's top automakers on Tuesday told an industry conference that they were optimistic about growth in their car sales in the Asia-Pacific region, led by newly emerging middle-class consumers in countries like China.

Ford Motor Co. president and chief operating officer Nick Scheele called the region "the last great globally significant auto market" while Frederick Henderson, General Motors Corp. Asia-Pacific president, said "China is very important," and "India is a great business opportunity".

Ford, the world's second largest carmaker after GM in terms of sales, has already announced plans to invest a total of 1.5 billion dollars in China, Thailand and the Philippines, Scheele noted.

Meanwhile, General Motors has posted an operating profit of US$400 million in the first nine months of this year in the Asia- Pacific region, already surpassing the $181 million recorded for the whole of last year, according to Henderson.

Mitsubishi Motors Corp. sees average annual growth in light vehicle sales in Asia excluding Japan at 7.7 percent from 2001 to 2006, said Mitsubishi's president and chief executive officer Rolf Eckrodt.

That beats projections for other regions, such as 1.4 percent in North America including Mexico and 1.1 percent in Europe, Eckrodt said.

Japan's fourth-ranked carmaker sold 500,000 cars in Asia excluding Japan in the year to March 2003, roughly one third of its global sales, he said. The company sold 300,000 units in Japan in that year.

Executives at the Tokyo International Automotive Conference acknowledged China was not trouble-free for major carmakers, but said the scales were tipped in favor of more business opportunities while not dismissing the risks.

"We are concerned about the situation," GM's Henderson said. "Intellectual property is a serious matter."

Yet working in partnership in China has helped the company reduce operating costs, such as those of materials, he said, adding that GM sees potential in selling luxury cars to Chinese consumers.

Nissan Motor president and chief executive officer Carlos Ghosn said he saw no immediate end to rapid growth in China or the emergence of any over-capacity, despite the fact more non- Chinese automakers are rushing to build factories to take advantage of the burgeoning market.

"There is no reason to believe" that the high growth rate in China will stop, Ghosn said.

He said the problem of production over-capacity may eventually emerge once the Chinese car market matures but added: "Is it going to be imminent? I don't think so."

Toyota Motor president Fujio Cho, on the other hand, stressed that "China is definitely an opportunity," when asked whether it offered business opportunities or posed a threat.

Cho repeated that Toyota -- Japan's top automaker and the third largest in the world -- aims to grab a 10 percent share in the Chinese market by 2010.

"It's an optimistic forecast because Chinese society is hard to predict, but I wish to make inroads (into the Chinese market) so that we will have captured at least 10 percent of the market." he said, adding it was uncertain how many unit car sales the 10 percent would translate into.

Toyota has not yet decided whether it will boost output in China by using the existing capacity through partnership with two Chinese manufacturers or building new factories to hit the target.

As for Japan, Cho said he felt the Japanese economy was headed for a gradual recovery, judging from recent economic data.

He cautioned, however, that the government's structural reform would take a long time and its slow pace should not necessarily be seen as an indication of continued economic stagnation in the world's second largest economy.

The conference was held on the eve of the Tokyo Motor Show which opens to the press on Wednesday and the public on Saturday.