Promise made for production in Japan

Toyota Motor Corp. president Akio Toyoda took the helm at Japan's auto industry group Thursday with a promise to keep production and jobs at home to help along the country's recovery from last year's tsunami disaster. Mr. Toyoda also sharply criticized government plans to raise Japan's sales tax as a "moral hazard" Thursday, and urged what he called overly high taxation on car ownership to be reformed first. "Companies that are working hard should be rewarded," he said at a Tokyo news conference to mark the start of his stint as head of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association. Japan has a complex system of taxation on cars estimated to be about twice or triple those in Britain and Germany, and a whopping 49 times the U.S.