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Toyota says it will expand planned Tijuana pickup plant

By ELLIOT SPAGAT
Associated Press Writer

TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) Toyota Motor Co. said Friday that it would expand its pickup truck plant under construction in Tijuana, boosting the economic prospects of a city that has been hurt by the flight of manufacturing jobs to Asia and weakness in the U.S. economy.

The Japanese automaker said it would boost annual production to 180,000 Tacoma truck beds from 170,000 and assemble 30,000 Tacoma trucks, instead of 20,000. It said it would begin making trucks in 2004 instead of 2005.

Toyota said the expansion would increase employment at the plant to 780 jobs from 460. Eighty of the new jobs will be at Toyota Tsusho Corp., an import-export company and Toyota partner that will build a suppliers' park on the 700-acre site.

The $140 million plant is small by auto industry standards but Mexican officials seized on the expansion as a vote of confidence in the country's border economy.

``I am certain that your plant will strengthen the competitiveness of our automotive industry, it will encourage the creation of jobs and international reserves, and it will have a great multiplier effect on the region's economy,'' Mexican President Vicente Fox said before touring the construction site.

Tijuana, even more than other cities along Mexico's northern border, has been hit hard by plant closures in recent years. Canon Inc. recently moved its inkjet printer plant to Vietnam. Toy maker Hasbro Inc. has moved its plant to China.

Employment at maquiladora plants which assemble duty-free goods for export fell 30 percent in Tijuana between October 2000 and December 2002, to about 140,000 jobs from about 200,000. The decline in maquiladora jobs throughout Mexico was a more modest 21 percent during the same time, to about 1.1 million jobs from 1.4 million.

Toyota said in January 2002 that it would build the Tijuana plant to supply Tacoma pickup truck beds to a plant in Fremont, Calif., that the company operates in a joint venture with General Motors Corp. Last year, Toyota said it would also assemble some Tacoma pickups in Tijuana, its first in Mexico.

The plant will account for only 30,000 of the nearly 1.7 million vehicles that Toyota projects it will make at its six North American factories in 2006. It will also be one of the smallest auto assembly plants in Mexico, which produced 2.3 million vehicles last year.

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