Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer plans to test its new eight seat corporate jet in the first half of 2007, a company executive said on Thursday.

The plane, dubbed the "Very Light Jet," is part of a new family of corporate planes that Embraer is developing with an eye on diversifying its revenue base.

Embraer, short for Empresa Brasileira de Aeronautica, currently only gets about 6 percent of its revenue from the corporate aviation market.

But with its new jet, it hopes the corporate market will account for closer to 20 percent of its revenue within the next five to 10 years.

"We're talking about 20 percent of a pie that is growing in size, which means we're going to grow at a faster pace in the executive aviation market than in other areas," Luis Carlos Affonso, Embraer's vice president, said at a news conference at the company's main factory in Sao Jose dos Campos.

The new jet will have a list price of USD$2.75 million and is expected to go into service by mid-2008. It will complement Embraer's only existing corporate jet, the Legacy, which can seat up to 16 passengers.

Embraer, which gets the bulk of its revenue from selling regional jets to airlines on both sides of the Atlantic, is also looking to break into the US defense market.

Last year, the Brazilian jet maker was a key member of a consortium led by Lockheed Martin that won an USD$879 million contract to develop new spy planes for the US Army.

But the Embraer jet, a modified version of its 50 seat commuter plane, proved too small for the Army's needs, fueling speculation that Lockheed may drop Embraer from the program.