Business Briefs
Reported by Star-Bulletin staff & wire
Thursday, April 25, 1996
Reported by Star-Bulletin staff & wire
Thursday, April 25, 1996
According the the report by the department's Bureau of Economic Analysis, Hawaii's per capita incomes rose an 2.9 percent to $24,738 in 1995.
The bureau estimated the U.S. inflation rate for 1995 at 2.4 percent while per capita personal income rose 5 percent nationally in 1995 to $22,788, up from $21,699 a year earlier.
Per capita income is the annual total income of residents divided by a state's population.
The report said that incomes outpaced inflation in all states but North and South Dakota.
The fastest growing state was Louisiana, where income shot up 6.9 percent, to $18,827.
Besides Hawaii, other slow-growing states were New Jersey, up 4 percent to $28,858; Montana, up 3.7 percent to $18,482; and Alaska, up 3.2 percent to $24,182.
Matson Navigation Co. and Sea-Land Service Inc. operate as a "duopoly" with no real competition, said the complaint filed by Consumer Advocate Charles Totto.
The two carriers have essentially the same rates, raise those rates in "lock-step" fashion every year, and discriminate against small-volume shippers, Totto said.
He urged the U.S. Department of Transportation to extract market information that he said he had not been able to obtain for Matson and Sea-Land.
Officials for the two carriers strongly disagreed with Totto, saying his information was incorrect and that the shipping market in Hawaii is, indeed, competitive.
Totto's comments were made in response to a U.S. Department of Transportation Department request for comments on a proposed study of shipping to Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico and Guam from other U.S. ports.
The state Public Utilities Commission, at the request of GTE Hawaiian Tel, has pushed back the date for eliminating the special five-digit codes that customers of competing carriers now dial before making interisland calls.
The PUC has ordered Hawaiian Tel to provide equal access to its interisland phone network by July 10, instead of May 1, the original implementation date.
Once Hawaiian Tel makes the switch, local customers of AT&T and Sprint will only have to dial 1 or 0 and the phone number (including area code.) That will be the same as Hawaiian Tel customers, eliminating an advantage the carrier now has in the interisland market. A Hawaiian Tel spokeswoman said the company can meet the new deadline.