It will manufacture Corolla compacts and medium-class Camry cars (15,000 annually), the economic newspaper Nihon Keizai said on Saturday.
This will be the first Japanese car factory in Russia. Toyota views the Russian car consumer market as the world's second largest after that of China.
All relevant papers will be signed and the construction of the factory will be launched in 2004. It will not be a joint venture but a factory fully managed by the Japanese, Toyota spokesmen said.
The site for the new factory has not yet been chosen. It may be Nizhny Novgorod or the Moscow region.
Toyota is to allocate up to 10 billion yens (approximately $100 million) on the construction.
According to Nihon Keizai, Russia's economic growth has enlarged its automobile market by 10% to 1,200,000 cars. 200,000 of them are foreign-made, mostly Corolla, Land Cruiser and Lexus, cars imported from Japan.
The U.S. companies General Motors and Ford Motors are already producing their cars in Russia. Now, Toyota will have to compete with them, the newspaper writes.
