TOKYO, Dec 6 (Reuters) - Mazda Motor Corp aims to nearly double its annual sales to around 2 million vehicles in about five years, with sales additions from fast-growing markets such as Brazil and India, its chief executive said on Monday.
Mazda, Japan's fifth-biggest automaker, had officially targeted a plan to increase global sales to 1.7 million vehicles by the business year ending in March 2016, up 43 percent from around 1.19 million vehicles last year.
But CEO Takashi Yamanouchi said Mazda expected to sell another 300,000 vehicles or so in Brazil, India, Russia and other emerging markets.
"We want to become a car maker with a scale of about 2 million vehicles and raise our presence," he told a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Tokyo.
Mazda has forecast global vehicle sales of 1.32 million units in the year to next March.
Yamanouchi's comment suggests Mazda is planning to enter the Brazilian and Indian markets, where it currently sells no cars.
Mazda is aiming to survive fierce competition with a new series of fuel-efficient engines and transmissions to be rolled out on 80 percent of its vehicles by the 2015/16 business year.
Mazda is now owned just 3.5 percent by Ford Motor Co after the U.S. automaker sold most of its stake in it last month. (Reporting by Kentaro Sugiyama; Writing by Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by Michael Watson)