Toyota slashed its profit forecast yesterday for the fiscal year, barely breaking even at ¥50 billion (US$555 million), as Japan’s top automaker gets hammered by plunging global demand and a surging yen.
That’s a tiny fraction of its ¥1.7 trillion net profit from the previous fiscal year through March.
“The change that has hit the world economy is of a critical scale that comes once in a hundred years,” Toyota president Katsuaki Watanabe said at the company’s Nagoya office.
The drop in vehicle sales over the last month was “far faster, wider and deeper than expected.”
Sinking sales in the US in the wake of the financial crisis have dealt a heavy blow to Japanese automakers. But Watanabe said that emerging markets, which had held up in the beginning, were also slowing down now.
The surging yen, which erodes overseas earnings, has battered profits. The dollar has fallen to 13-year lows of about 90 yen recently.
Toyota Motor Corp, which makes the popular Camry sedan and Prius gas-electric hybrid, now expects to sell 8.96 million vehicles around the world this calendar year, down 4 percent from what it sold last year, Watanabe told reporters.
Unlike previous years, he gave no goal for next year.
In July, Toyota lowered its global vehicle sales target for this year to 9.5 million from the initial 9.85 million. Last year, it sold 9.37 million vehicles around the world.
Toyota also lowered its sales forecast for the fiscal year through March to ¥21.5 trillion, down about 18 percent from its earlier projection at ¥23 trillion.
Grabbing attention in recent years has been whether Toyota would dethrone Detroit-based General Motors Corp as the world’s No. 1 in annual vehicles sales.
But the mood was pure gloom at the president’s annual year-end event.
MORE VISITORS: The Tourism Administration said that it is seeing positive prospects in its efforts to expand the tourism market in North America and Europe Taiwan has been ranked as the cheapest place in the world to travel to this year, based on a list recommended by NerdWallet. The San Francisco-based personal finance company said that Taiwan topped the list of 16 nations it chose for budget travelers because US tourists do not need visas and travelers can easily have a good meal for less than US$10. A bus ride in Taipei costs just under US$0.50, while subway rides start at US$0.60, the firm said, adding that public transportation in Taiwan is easy to navigate. The firm also called Taiwan a “food lover’s paradise,” citing inexpensive breakfast stalls
TRADE: A mandatory declaration of origin for manufactured goods bound for the US is to take effect on May 7 to block China from exploiting Taiwan’s trade channels All products manufactured in Taiwan and exported to the US must include a signed declaration of origin starting on May 7, the Bureau of Foreign Trade announced yesterday. US President Donald Trump on April 2 imposed a 32 percent tariff on imports from Taiwan, but one week later announced a 90-day pause on its implementation. However, a universal 10 percent tariff was immediately applied to most imports from around the world. On April 12, the Trump administration further exempted computers, smartphones and semiconductors from the new tariffs. In response, President William Lai’s (賴清德) administration has introduced a series of countermeasures to support affected
CROSS-STRAIT: The vast majority of Taiwanese support maintaining the ‘status quo,’ while concern is rising about Beijing’s influence operations More than eight out of 10 Taiwanese reject Beijing’s “one country, two systems” framework for cross-strait relations, according to a survey released by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Thursday. The MAC’s latest quarterly survey found that 84.4 percent of respondents opposed Beijing’s “one country, two systems” formula for handling cross-strait relations — a figure consistent with past polling. Over the past three years, opposition to the framework has remained high, ranging from a low of 83.6 percent in April 2023 to a peak of 89.6 percent in April last year. In the most recent poll, 82.5 percent also rejected China’s
PLUGGING HOLES: The amendments would bring the legislation in line with systems found in other countries such as Japan and the US, Legislator Chen Kuan-ting said Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Kuan-ting (陳冠廷) has proposed amending national security legislation amid a spate of espionage cases. Potential gaps in security vetting procedures for personnel with access to sensitive information prompted him to propose the amendments, which would introduce changes to Article 14 of the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法), Chen said yesterday. The proposal, which aims to enhance interagency vetting procedures and reduce the risk of classified information leaks, would establish a comprehensive security clearance system in Taiwan, he said. The amendment would require character and loyalty checks for civil servants and intelligence personnel prior to
RSS