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Wednesday, August 27, 2003
Durable goods orders up 1% in July
Biggest gain in six months beats forecasts
U.S. orders for durable goods rose in July for a second month, led by increased bookings for automobiles, computers and communications equipment, a government report shows.
Orders for items made to last at least three years rose 1 percent to $174 billion after rising a revised 2.6 percent in June, the Commerce Department said in Washington.
Excluding transportation equipment, orders rose 1.7 percent, the biggest gain in six months and almost three times more than economists projected.
Retail sales in July had the biggest gain in four months. That may boost production at the nation's factories, where inventories of durable goods have declined in 29 of the past 30 months.
A rebound in manufacturing and corporate spending may help broaden the recovery and ensure it's sustained, economists said.
"We are starting to see some signs of life in manufacturing," said Bill Natcher, economist at National City Corp. in Cleveland. "Confidence is starting to come back and businesses are starting to go out and make some investments."
The Treasury's 4 1/4 percent note maturing in August 2013 fell 3/8 point, pushing up the yield 5 basis points to 4.58 percent, amid signs of an accelerating economic recovery. A basis point is 0.01 percentage point.
The back-to-back increase was the first since February-March 2001. Economists had expected durable goods orders to rise 1 percent, based on the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey. Orders excluding transportation equipment were expected to rise 0.6 percent.
Starting with this report, the government again issued figures on shipments of semiconductors. Information on those orders had been suspended since last year when some producers stopped reporting. Information on orders is still unavailable.
Inventories of durable goods fell 0.9 percent last month, the biggest decline since March 2002. Shipments rose 2.6 percent.
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