TOKYO (AFP) – Japan’s top motor company Toyota plans to boost its overseas production by 40 percent from 2005 levels to five million units in 2008, a press report said.

The plan will be led by greater output in North America and in the fast growing market of China, the leading Japanese business daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun said.

Toyota Motor Corp is also targeting 2008 domestic production at about 4.15 million units, up 9.5 percent from the 2005 level of 3.79 million units, the report added.

Toyota’s overseas output, which totaled 3.57 million units in 2005, is expected to exceed its domestic output within three years, the daily said.

No official was available at the firm’s head office here to confirm the report.

Overseas production by Japanese motor companies as a whole already topped their domestic output for the first time in the business year to March 2006, the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association announced earlier.

Toyota targets its 2008 output in North America at about 1.84 million units, up 20 percent from 2005. It plans to open a new plant in Texas in the coming months and another in Canada in 2008, the report said.

The firm’s 2008 production in China is targeted at about more than 600,000 units, compared with 134,500 in 2005. Toyota will assemble the subcompact car Yaris at a factory in Guangzhou and also produce small cars in Tianjin.

In the rest of Asia, excluding Japan and China, Toyota’s 2008 production is projected to exceed one million for the first time, the report said.

The firm will start up its third factory in Thailand to produce a line of its IMV (Innovative International Multipurpose Vehicle), a mainstay model for its global strategy, the daily said.