TOKYO Hitachi Ltd., Japan's largest machinery maker, plans to cut 6,500 workers by March 2000 as part of a major cost-cutting plan, the company said Friday. The labor cuts, to affect about 10 percent of Hitachi's 67,000-member workforce, will be achieved through attrition, an early retirement program, and the transfer of some 4,000 employees to a home electronics unit created Thursday as a spinoff of Hitachi's related division, said Hitachi spokesman Takeshi Okamoto. On Thursday, Hitachi's new president Etsuhiko Shoyama said in a press conference that he aims to return to the company to the black this fiscal year, ending March 2000. He said he intends to present a new management plan within the next six months that increases the importance the company places on its shareholders and uses capital more efficiently.

``My mission as president is to transform Hitachi into a high profit business,'' he said. (AP)