Motosikal Dan Enjin Nasional (Modenas) aims to increase its market share for motorcycles in Malaysia to 15% this year from 10% last year, says chief executive officer Abdul Harith Abdullah.

"About 400,000 motorcycles are expected to be sold in the country this year. We are confident of taking up 15% of this figure, or 61,000 units," he said.

Last year, of the 540,000 units sold in the country, about 10% or about 55,000 were Modenas motorcycles, he added.

Harith said the recently released 130cc GT128 (launched in March) would spearhead the sales of Modenas. In March, this model sold 1,000 units and last month, its sales hit 1,600, he said. "Our 200 dealers are asking for additional units of GT128 to be delivered. Next month, we will start to produce 2,500 units of the GT128 (monthly). This is why we are confident of increasing our market share this year," he said.

Harith said Modenas would introduce another new model in the fourth quarter. He added that Modenas would also this year add 20 engineers to the present research and development (R&D) team of 40. "We will be spending 10% to 15% of our RM 240 million (US$ 68.6 million) revenue generated for the 2009 fiscal year ended March on R&D work. A further 3% to 5% of our revenue would go to advertising and promotion campaigns," he said.

Harith said the plant in Gurun was currently running on a single shift to produce about 67,000 units this year. "We can produce up to 200,000 units per year if the plant is run on three shifts," he said, adding that about RM 400 million had been invested in the plant.

Harith said Modenas would also look into tapping the markets in the region, Europe and the Middle East this year. Exports contribute about 10% to its revenue.

Presently Modenas has distributors in Greece, Iran, Brunei and Singapore.