INTERVIEW-Honda supply shortage to last through FY-CFO

* Shortage of car supply to persist through March 2009

* New Indiana plant to build only 22,000 cars this FY

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By Chang-Ran Kim and Nobuhiro Kubo

TOKYO (Reuters) - Honda Motor Co (7267.T) said on Monday its output of passenger cars would fall short of demand at least through the rest of the business year to next March as fuel prices force customers to look for smaller cars.

Sinking sales of sport utility vehicles and other light trucks have hit the industry hard, and Japan's No.2 automaker is scrambling to substitute output of such gas-thirsty vehicles with sought-after cars such as the Civic model.

Honda has already mapped out some measures to ease the imbalance in North America, its biggest market, including plans to transfer production in Ontario of the Ridgeline pickup truck to an underused factory in Alabama to make more room for Civics in Canada by the end of the year.

But Chief Financial Officer Yoichi Hojo said the adjustments were incremental and not enough to fully address the problem in the short term.

"We don't have enough Accords, Civics and Fits in the United States," he told Reuters in an interview, explaining the unexpected 9.2 percent fall in adjusted U.S. sales last month.