Business Briefs

Reported by Star-Bulletin staff & wire

Thursday, March 13, 1997

30-year mortgages
unchanged this week

WASHINGTON -- Thirty-year, fixed-rate mortgage rates were unchanged this week at 7.84 percent from last week, according to a national survey released today by the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp.

Fifteen-year rates fell to 7.34 percent from 7.35 percent last week. One-year adjustable mortgage rates inched up to 5.61 percent from 5.54 percent.

Hotels, restaurants
join for expo again

The 1997 Hotel & Restaurant Expo is scheduled for July 9-10 at the Neal Blaisdell Center exhibition hall, the second time the Hawaii Restaurant Association and the Hawaii Hotel Association have combined their annual trade shows into one.

Exhibit space is selling fast, said Ken Kanter, show manager. Last year's show, the first in which the two trade groups joined in one show, had 340 booths operated by about 250 vendors. Kanter said it attracted about 5,000 buyers.

In the first three weeks of selling for the 1997 show, nearly 300 spaces have been booked by about 180 exhibitors, he said.

The show, managed by Douglas Trade Productions Inc., is for vendors of goods and services to hotels, restaurants, caterers, architects, clubs, retirement centers, and businesses related to hospitality.

For more information, call Kanter at 261-3400.

U.S. retail sales rise,
but trade deficit grows

WASHINGTON -- U.S. consumers continued a spending binge in February, but America's trade deficit soared to its second worst performance in history last year.

Retail sales rose a strong 0.8 percent in February after shooting up 1.5 percent in January, the Commerce Department said today. That runs counter to the projections of many economists, who were looking for economic growth to slow in the first three months of this year.

Separately, the Commerce Department said the current account trade deficit rose 11.4 percent to $165.1 billion, just short of the all-time record of $167.4 billion set in 1987. It is the broadest measure of America's foreign trade.

More Americans behind
on credit card bills

WASHINGTON -- The number of Americans falling behind on their credit card bills jumped at the end of 1996 to the highest level on record, despite a healthy economy.

The delinquency rate -- the percentage of accounts 30 or more days overdue -- climbed in the fourth quarter to a seasonally adjusted 3.72 percent of accounts, up from 3.48 percent in the third quarter, the American Bankers Association said today. That beat the old record of 3.66 percent set in the second quarter and was the highest since the group began tracking the figure in 1973.

Japan dockworkers
refuse to work Sundays

TOKYO -- Dockworkers in half of Japan's ports will refuse to work on Sundays starting this weekend to protest U.S. pressure to open up port services to greater competition, union officials said today.

The move came the day after stevedores shut down 50 of Japan's 96 ports in a one-day strike, hitting shippers with hefty losses, to protest planned U.S. sanctions on Japanese shippers entering U.S. ports.

The dockworkers only work on Sunday if there are weekend ship arrivals. The indefinite boycott is not expected to paralyze Japan's ports.