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

DATE: TUESDAY, May 18, 1993                   TAG: 9305180060
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

ROANOKE VALLEY ECONOMIC INDICATORS

It cost $144 in April to buy the same goods and services that were priced at only $100 in the index's base period of 1982-1984. The April figure was up 0.4 percent from 143.6 in March and 4.3 percent higher on an annualized basis. It compares with 139.5 in April 1992.

Other new statistics this week on the Roanoke Valley economic indicators:

New car registrations, a common indicator of auto sales, were down for the month and for the year in the Roanoke Valley.

The Virginia Automobile Dealers Association said 584 cars were registered here in April, down 6.4 percent from 624 in March and off 8.9 percent from 641 in April a year ago.

Dealers registered 1,974 cars so far in 1993, down 3.42 percent from 2,044 in the 1992 period.

A cool April let Appalachian Power Co. top April 1992's sales of 263,596,581 kilowatt hours of electricity by 6 percent, to 280,275,364 kilowatt hours last month. The latest figure was down 8 percent from March's sales of 305,844,101 kilowatt hours.