Toyota Motor Corp. said Wednesday its domestic sales for January fell for the first time in 13 months as a data-rigging scandal at its small-car unit Daihatsu Motor Co. led to a production halt of some Toyota brand cars the unit made.

The number of cars Toyota sold in Japan slipped 13.7 percent from a year earlier to 112,425 units as the supply of cars the automaker commissions Daihatsu to make dwindled, Toyota said.

Its sales outside of Japan rose 15.9 percent to 672,102 cars, helped by robust demand in North America, pushing its worldwide sales up 10.5 percent to 784,527 units. Both figures are a record high for the month of January, according to Toyota.

Daihatsu stopped all its domestic production on Dec. 26 after revealing that a third-party panel found that it had rigged safety testing data for most of its models. The unit did not build any cars in January.

Toyota's overseas production grew 9.5 percent to 522,851 units, also a record high for January, as strong demand in the United States and Canada coupled with an easing chip shortage resulted in a 22.0 percent increase in the region.

Domestic production rose 2.8 percent to 217,481 vehicles, while global output increased 7.4 percent to 740,332 units.

Toyota also said it will fully resume domestic production Monday by restarting the remaining two production lines at two of its factories in Japan that have been stopped due to another data-rigging scandal at its affiliate Toyota Industries Corp.

The world's biggest automaker group has been hit with quality issues in recent years, which prompted Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda to apologize and vow to strengthen governance for the group last month.

==Kyodo

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