Mitsubishi to start hiring again

Japan's Mitsubishi Motors will hire another 1,300 workers in Thailand as the car market slowly recovers after being battered by the global recession.

Mitsubishi will take on new employees as it resumes two-shift production at three plants, having reduced its stockpile of unsold vehicles, helped by robust export to Southeast Asian markets.

Japan's fourth-largest carmaker shed 1,100 temporary workers at its Thai plants at the end of January because it wanted to curb output due to a slump in sales.

Mitsubishi Motors (Thailand) president, Nobuyuki Murahashi, announced that hiring would begin this month to prepare for production shifts that will start late next month or early November.

Mitsubishi (Thailand) will be launching the next-generation Lancer - Lancer EX - later this year and has decided to offer its current Lancer model as a cheaper option for customers.

Japanese automakers have been taking a beating from the global financial crisis, but they say that they are starting to see some glimmers of recovery thanks to government incentives and the growing popularity of fuel-efficient cars.

Most Japanese auto companies in Thailand had put staff on temporary leave earlier this year and late last year. Toyota Motor (Thailand), the country's largest automaker, terminated the employment of 1,000 sub-contracted workers in three of its plants but has re-hired almost all of them, a company source said.

Mitsubishi Motors was mired in debt in the April-June quarter but expects to start making profits during this financial year until March.

Toyota Motor said on Tuesday that it was recruiting about 800 temporary workers in Japan - its first such hiring in more than a year. In Thailand, Mitsubishi owns three plants in Chon Buri - one for the production of engines and two for producing vehicle chassis.