PEPSICO, the world's largest snack maker, plans to invest US$1 billion in China over the next four years and create "thousands of jobs."

The company also intends to boost local research and development, launch new products, expand its sales force and build its brand in China, it said yesterday.

"This is our largest investment in China in the nearly 30 years we have been doing business here, and it is consistent with our broader global strategy of investing in high-growth developing markets," Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Indra Nooyi said. "We are enormously confident in the continued prosperity of China."

The announcement came as the company announced cutting 3,300 jobs because of declining sales in the United States.

Third-quarter profit missed analysts' estimates and the company lowered its forecast for the rest of the year.

The maker of Pepsi-Cola and Gatorade has said it wants to save US$1.2 billion over three years as it closes as many as six plants and reduces staff count by 1.8 percent.

Pepsico is joining other foreign companies such as Best Buy and Wal-Mart Stores in focusing on emerging markets while their sales suffer at home, Bloomberg News said. Pepsico has already announced a US$500-million investment in India over the next three years.

Competitive

Sophie Fan, a Hong Kong-based consumer analyst at CSC Securities HK, said: "The Chinese drinks market is already very competitive and quite mature. The quickest way to gain market share would be to do mergers and acquisitions like Coca-Cola. The company can buy companies cheaply in the difficult market."

Pepsico and its bottling partners employ more than 22,000 people in China and its products produced and sold here include Pepsi-Cola, Frito-Lay snacks, Tropicana juices, Quaker foods and Gatorade.

Pepsico has 31 percent of China's soda market, according to Euromonitor International, trailing the 54-percent share of Coca-Cola, the world's largest soft-drink maker.

Best Buy, the largest US electronics retailer, plans to more than double its number of stores in China to at least 12 next year, Robert Willett, chief executive officer of Best Buy's international business, said last week. Sales at its US stores fell about 2 percent in September.

Wal-Mart also had no plans to slow expansion in China, Rob Cissell, its chief operating officer, has said. Its sales in the US were up just 2.4 percent in September.