NAGOYA (Kyodo) Toyota Motor Corp. is considering substantial cuts in bonuses paid to its executives in fiscal 2008 as part of cost-cutting efforts amid rapidly deteriorating business performance, informed sources said Sunday.

The pay cuts, which may result in bonus payments being skipped altogether, will be endorsed at a shareholders' meeting next June, the sources said.

The nation's top automaker is also mulling cutting executives' salaries, they said.

The moves come as Toyota is likely to further revise downward its group earnings projections for the current fiscal year ending March next year.

In fiscal 2007, Toyota paid a total about 1 billion yen in bonuses to some 29 board members and a total 64.5 million yen to seven auditors.

In addition to the bonuses, the automaker also paid a total of about 2.85 billion yen in executives' salaries in fiscal 2007.

Toyota has already cut winter bonuses for managerial officials by 10 percent from the year before.

In early November, Toyota lowered its earnings estimates for fiscal 2008. At that time, Toyota anticipated a group net profit of 550 billion yen, down 68.0 percent from a year before, and an operating profit of 600 billion yen, down 73.6 percent, on sales of 23 trillion yen, down 12.5 percent.

But its earnings have deteriorated further since early November due to continuing declines in global auto sales and the yen's sharp appreciation against the U.S. dollar and the euro.

Toyota is now expected to report an operating loss of about 100 billion yen in the October-March period.