August 30, 2002	Friday	Jamadi-us-Saani 20, 1423

BEIJING, Aug 29: Japan’s Toyota took a major step into the booming Chinese vehicle market on Thursday, announcing a tie-up with local giant First Automotive Works (FAW) to jointly manufacture up to 400,000 vehicles a year.

The new venture aims to grab an eventual 10 per cent share of the country’s car market, the firms said at a press conference in Beijing. Neither company would disclose the size of their investment nor the models to be built.

We do not have concrete figures at this stage, Toyota president Fujio Cho told reporters.

However, he said that based on past experience, production of 200,000 cars would normally require an investment of 150 billion yuan (18 billion dollars).

So for 300,000 to 400,000 cars, you can work this out for yourselves, although you can’t take it as a final figure as there will be many factors affecting the size of our investment, he said, saying the project would use existing FAW equipment.—AFP