
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 24, 1990                   TAG: 9003242396
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

DURABLE GOODS ORDERS RISE

Orders for "big-ticket" durable goods rose 3.3 percent last month, the government said Friday, but analysts said the modest rebound from a record slide in January merely pointed to continued weakness in manufacturing.

Cynthia Latta, an economist with DRI/McGraw-Hill in Lexington, Mass., noted that the February increase followed a 10.7 percent plunge and said, "Consequently, we didn't get back everything we lost.

"It's hard to find anything that's really encouraging except the fact that it didn't fall again," she added. "The industrial sector doesn't seem to be falling into a deep recession; it's just far from booming."

The Commerce Department said orders to U.S. factories for durable goods - items expected to last more than three years - totaled a seasonally adjusted $121.6 billion.

The January decline, revised from the originally reported 10.5 percent, was the biggest since the government began keeping track of such orders 32 years ago and broke the record set in the recession month of February 1982, when orders plummeted 9.2 percent.

Transportation orders, which fell 29.4 percent in January and accounted for most of that month's drop, bounced back 11.2 percent last month to $30.2 billion.

Primary metals orders slipped 3.6 percent to $10.7 billion after a 1.3 percent gain in the preceding month. Steel accounted for most of the loss.

- Associated Press

by CNB