US factory orders fall for second straight month in February
3/4/2008 16:30
New orders for manufactured goods to America's factories fell for the
second straight month in February, the Commerce Department reported
yesterday.
For February, factory orders dropped by 1.3 percent, about double
the decline expected by economists. The drop followed an even bigger 2.3 percent
in January, the largest decrease in five months.
Demand for durable goods,
big-ticket items expected to last at least three years such as computers, cars
and machinery, were down 1.1 percent while orders for nondurable goods, products
such as oil and chemicals, fell by 1.5 percent in February.
Orders for
transportation equipment, which account for more than a quarter of total durable
goods demand, rose by 1.8 percent in February, compared with a 12.3 percent
plunge in January.
Excluding volatile transportation products, overall
factory orders would have fallen 1.8 percent, sharper than a 0.3 percent decline
in January.
The report also showed that factory shipments, considered a good
indication of current demand, decreased by 2.1 percent in February, in contrast
to an increase of 1.1 percent in the previous month.
The
inventories-to-shipments ratio was 1.27 in February, up from 1.24 in January.
The ratio is a measure of how long it would take to deplete stocks at the
current sales pace.
Analysts say that the latest snapshot of factory orders
provides fresh evidence that the risk of a recession is rising due to a severe
housing slump and credit crunch.
Xinhua
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