Toyota exports seen to reach $536M

Toyota Auto Parts Philippines Inc. (TAPI) is projecting its exports this year to reach $536 million or about P26.8 billion due to continuing demand for vehicles under Toyota’s Innovative Multi-Purpose Vehicle (IMV) project.

For the fourth quarter of this year alone, TAPI expects its exports to reach $137.88 million.

This year’s export target is expected to be 6.76 percent higher than the company’s actual shipments in 2005 which amounted to just $502 million.

In 2004, TAPI’s export receipts amounted to only $384 million, while in 2003 it exports amounted to $373 million.

For the first nine months of this year TAPI’s exports amounted to $398.06.

Early this year, Serafin Pantaleon, senior vice president of TAPI’s parent firm, Toyota Motors Philippines had said that the continued growth of the company’s auto parts exports is due to continuing global and domestic demand for car models under Toyota’s IMV projects which uses the Philippine manufactured auto parts.

Toyota’s IMV project started in February 2005. The IMV project includes the Innova, Hi-Lux and Fortuner models.

Among the parts TAPI exports are transmission assemblies manufactured at its Santa Rosa, Laguna production plant.

The Laguna facility is Toyota’s manu-facturing hub for its auto parts products.

About 14 compa-nies manufacture parts and accessories in the Philippines.

TAPI exports to Toyota‘s direct custo-mers, but the bulk of TAPI’s production is distributed as part of completely knocked down (CKD) kits worldwide through the company’s operations in Japan.

TAPI exports to major Asian countries such as Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, India and even in South Africa. — Marianne Go