Nissan (IW 1000/26) said Wednesday it expected double-digit sales growth this fiscal year due to demand in China, despite continued weakness in the European economy.
Nissan's Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn said the company was confident about meeting its sales target of 5.35 million units for the fiscal year ending March 2013, up around 11% from a year earlier, Dow Jones Newswires reported.
"We continue to see growth within the next six months," Ghosn said.
Nissan, which is expanding in China, announced in June that it would build a $784 million factory in China, the world's biggest car market, through its joint venture with China's Dongfeng Motor Group.
The new plant in the northeastern city of Dalian is scheduled to begin producing Nissan-brand passenger vehicles in 2014, with an annual capacity of 150,000 units, the Japanese firm said in a statement.
The investment is part of Nissan's efforts to meet its target of selling two million cars a year in China by 2015.
Nissan, Japan's second-biggest automaker, has no plans to lower its sales targets for China despite an ongoing territorial dispute between China and Japan over a chain of islands in the East China Sea, Ghosn said.
"If there's any impact on our sales it is not something that we can identify easily," he said, adding he still sees "very healthy" growth in China.
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2012
