Tokyo, Nov 16 (IANS/EFE): Electronics giant Panasonic plans to eliminate an additional 10,000 jobs by next spring, most of them at units outside Japan, company executives said.

Japan's leading commercial employer slashed 36,000 positions in 2011.

The bulk of the new cuts will come at overseas units of Panasonic's Sanyo subsidiary, the executives told the Kyodo news agency, adding that the company hopes to sell some business units and will close others.

Panasonic included the estimated cost of the layoffs in its profit estimate for the current fiscal year, which ends March 31, 2013.

The company is forecasting a net loss of nearly $10 billion for the fiscal year after losing around $8.5 billion between April 1 and Sep 30, a five-fold increase over the same period in 2011.

The chief financial officer of the Panasonic group, Hideaki Kawai, said he hopes to reduce the enterprise's net debt to zero by March 2015, business daily Nikkei reported Thursday.

Panasonic, with a total payroll of around 300,000 has been hurt by weak sales of its television, computers and cell phones.