Conducting export control audits

We regularly conduct export control audit to carry out thorough export control. There are two kinds of export control audits, one is audited by our Corporate Export Regulation Division and the other one is audited during regular audits by the Internal Auditing Office. We audit the following export control matters.

1. When each section or group company receives inquiries of products, do they check the products against the List Control, Catch All Control and the US Export Administration Regulations (EAR) before they issue estimates?
2. Do they check the above concerning the provision of technical information including business trips?
3. Do they carry out a check that the Catch All examination has been completed prior to shipments? (Tsuchiura Works only)
4. When disposing of assets such as production facility, do they complete the required export control procedures with the parties assigned to carry out the disposal? (Tsuchiura Works only)

We conducted audits by our Corporate Export Regulation Division at Middle East Center and the head office of Hitachi Construction Machinery (Europe), and Tsuchiura Works in November and December respectively in fiscal 2008. We also conducted export control audits at Hitachi Construction Machinery (Europe), Hexindo (a group company in Indonesia), Hitachi Construction Machinery Indonesia, Hitachi Construction Machinery (Malaysia) during the regular audits in June, September, January and March. Through these audits we confirmed that there were no serious problems concerning export control. The Corporate Export Regulation Division of Hitachi, Ltd. audited export control at Hitachi Construction Machinery in fiscal 2008 to confirm that improvements had been made to the matters pointed out as requiring improvement in fiscal 2007. We will continue to ensure thorough compliance with export control through audits.

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