Inventories Decline As Companies Keep An Eye on Recovery
WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. companies, keeping a close eye on the economic recovery, whittled excess stocks of unsold goods in February for the 13th consecutive month.</br></br>Stockpiles of unsold goods on shelves and back lots dipped by a seasonally adjusted 0.1% in February, the Commerce Department reported yesterday. That pushed the value of inventories down to $1.13 trillion, the lowest level since November 1999.</br></br>The drop in inventories came even as businesses' sales slid by 0.9%, the biggest decline in three months.</br></br>With inventories getting lean, prospects are raised that factories, which are already slowly boosting production after a sharp cutback, will need to crank it up more in the coming months, economists said. That's something that would help the country as it recovers from a recession.</br></br>As the economy stages a comeback, companies are working hard to gauge consumers' and businesses' appetite for their products, something that can be especially tricky when the economy is in transition, economists said.