October 31, 2001	Wednesday	Shaba’an 13, 1422

TOKYO, Oct 30: Japan’s Honda Motor Co. said on Tuesday interim net profit surged 42.5 per cent to $1.45 billion from the same time last year due to strong sales, a weak yen and aggressive restructuring efforts.

Net profit in the six months to September came to $1.45 billion, with pre-tax profit of 269.99 billion yen, a rise of 40.6 per cent from last year, the firm said.

Revenue rose 14.8 per cent to 3,505.00 billion yen.

Domestic sales and our cost reduction efforts, along with the weakening yen, all helped lift our profits, senior managing director Satoshi Aoki told a news conference.

The firm credited its revenue gains to strong domestic automobile sales, which rose 15.7 per cent over last year to 421,000 units. In contrast, overseas auto sales dropped 1.3 per cent to 867,000.

Motorcycle sales grew domestically by 0.5 per cent to 216,000, while overseas sales rose 11.2 per cent to 2.59 million units.

The company said its revenue would have grown half as much if not for the weakening of the yen, which averaged around 122 to the dollar in the six-month period, compared to 106 in the same period a year ago.

Honda said last month’s terrorist onslaught hardly affected business, but it would monitor any developments.

At this moment we are not contemplating any specific program to deal with the September 11, terrorist attacks, said executive vice president Koichi Amemiya. However, we have to be careful about looking at our results in the January to March quarter.

We may have to adjust the volume of production based on the results of the March quarter, he said.

Honda’s stunning profit growth amid a global economic slump was strongest in the second quarter to September, the company reported.—AFP