Panasonic Corp., the leading manufacturer of home appliances in Japan, announced Thursday that it cut 17,000 jobs from its workforce worldwide. President Fumio Ohtsubo said Thursday that the company minimize its operations to increase their profits, which include the sale of some units and staff reduction of nearly 367,000 workers to 350,000 in the next two fiscal years .
The Osaka-based company reported a profit loss of 40,700 billion yen (499 million dollars) for the quarter January to March.
Like other Japanese electronics makers, including arch-rival Sony, Panasonic has been impacted by competition from large South Korean companies like Samsung Electronics Co., the world leader in flat screen televisions. Therefore, it has reduced its roster to cut costs. A year ago was about 385,000 employees.
The company made the announcement after the Nikkei business daily, the largest circulation in Japan, Kyodo news agency said that Panasonic planned to cut 40,000 workers, constituting 10% of its total staff at year's end fiscal 2012. Indicated that the largest number of layoffs will occur Panasonic in overseas divisions.
Panasonic, manufacturer of flat screen TV Viera and Lumix digital camera, said his balance was affected by the earthquake and tsunami of March 11 in northeastern Japan, which halted production due to shortages of spare parts and reduced consumer spending in the midst of the ensuing nuclear crisis. Panasonic
said he could not give forecasts for the period beginning April 1 due to the impossibility of calculating damages even total disasters. He said they reduced their operating profit margin of $ 258 million for the year ended March 31.
The company has tried to adapt to the global trend towards cheaper devices, with new strategies being developed from which absorbed the manufacturer of batteries and solar panels Sanyo Electric Co. as a subsidiary. Sanyo's forte is the cheap home appliances, as well as solar panels and batteries, which is expected to benefit from the shift of consumers towards green technologies. "
Ohtsubo said the companies will be unified under the Panasonic brand and the target is to reach 115,000 million dollars in sales for the year ended March 31, 2013.
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