ROANOKE VALLEY ECONOMIC INDICATORS

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

DATE: TUESDAY, April 13, 1993                   TAG: 9304130351
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short
ROANOKE VALLEY ECONOMIC INDICATORS
Two measures of inflation sent mixed signals last week.
The Producer Price Index, the wholesale monitor of prices paid to farmers and factories, jumped 0.4 percent in March. The larger-than-expected increase, reported by the Labor Department last Thursday, prompted economists to worry that inflation might return as the economy recovers.
Add March's increasewith a 0.2 percent gain in January and 0.4 percent in February, and the first-quarter total translated to an annual inflation rate of 3.9 percent, the largest for any calendar quarter since the first three months of 1990. It would double the PPI increase for all of last year, which was 1.6 percent.
By Friday, however, economists were seeing signs that talk of health-care reform was helping to hold down prices. The Consumer Price Index, which measures changes at the retail level, was reported up 0.1 percent in March, including a 0.3 percent gain in medical costs, the smallest increase in that sector in nine years.
That meant a basket of goods and services costing $100 in the base period of 1982-84 would have cost $143.60 last month, up from $139.30 a year ago.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB