Sony Corporation Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Howard Stringer attends the Global Management Forum in Tokyo Oct. 27, 2008.

An employee dusts Sony Corp's Bravia flat panel LCD televisions at a Sofmap electric store in Tokyo May 14, 2008. Sony Corp posted a surprise quarterly loss as the weak stock market ate into the value of its securities holdings.

TOKYO, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- Sony Corp. said Tuesday it will cut about 8,000 jobs around the world by March 2010 to reduce cost amid a global economic downturn.

The 8,000 jobs are more than 4 percent of Sony's global workforce. The move is expected to cut costs by 1.1 billion U.S. dollars a year.

Sony's latest decision came after a recent series of similar job cut movements among Japanese companies, which rely heavily on exports.

The economic recession and a stronger yen have made business difficult for Japanese exporters. Sony expects its net profit for the current business year ending March 2009 to plunge about 60 percent from the previous year to about 1.6 billion U.S. dollars.

The Japanese electronics giant also plans to reduce the number of manufacturing sites around the world by about 10 percent from the current total of 57 by March 2010.

It will also cut investment for fiscal 2009 in the electronics division, which the company says was hit hardest by the financial crisis among its businesses, by 30 percent from the amount planned in a medium-term management program released in June.

The cost-cutting plan includes postponing an investment to boost production of liquid crystal display TVs in Slovakia because of "a plunge in European demand for flat-panel TVs", the company said in a statement.

It will also cut semiconductor-related investment planned for this fiscal year through outsourcing some of the production.