Japanese auto giant Toyota plans to invest around 100 billion yen (829 million dollars) building a new sports utility vehicle assembly plant in the United States, a newspaper said Tuesday.

Toyota Motor Corp., enjoying record-breaking sales in the US market, plans to announce the construction in the southern US state of Mississippi later this week, the Nikkei business daily reported, without citing sources.

Toyota's eighth assembly plant in the United States will have a production capacity of 150,000 units a year and is scheduled to begin operations in 2009, the daily said.

In 2006, Toyota's US sales surged 13 percent on the year to 2.54 million vehicles, including shipments from Japan, as demand for smaller vehicles assembled in Japan soared.

Toyota is trying to increase local production since the proportion of locally-made vehicles sold in the country fell to just over 50 percent amid concerns over a swelling trade deficit of the United States, it said.

Including a separate plan to start production at a Canadian plant, Toyota aims to raise annual production capacity in the United States from the current level of roughly 1.8 million vehicles to 2.2 million in 2009, it said.