Toyota raises annual forecasts on profit rise

TOKYO (AP) - Toyota Motor Corp. raised its fiscal year profit forecast on Tuesday to triple what it eked out for the disaster-struck previous year, as the world's top automaker continued on a comeback roll as sales surged, especially in the US.

Toyota's October-December profit jumped 23 per cent to 99.91 billion yen (S$1.3 billion), compared to the same period theprevious year. Quarterly sales edged up 9 per cent to 5.3 trillion yen.

Underlining its solid recovery, Toyota is now expecting fiscal year profit of 860 billion yen. It had initially expected a 780 billion yen profit. It had marked a 283.5 billion yen profit through March 2012.

Toyota also raised its sales forecast for the fiscal year through March, to 21.8 trillion yen, up 17 per cent from the previous fiscal year.