Or­ders for durable goods in the Unit­ed States rose by 2.2 per cent in Feb­ru­ary, re­cov­er­ing part­ly from a drop of 3.6 per cent in Jan­u­ary, of­fi­cial fig­ures have shown. To­tal or­ders for the goods-de­fined as items which last at least three years-hit US$211.8 bil­lion in the month, the Com­merce De­part­ment said.

Greater de­mand for air­craft, ma­chin­ery, com­put­ers and com­mu­ni­ca­tions equip­ment helped to dri­ve the in­crease. Or­ders have now risen in four of the past five months. Ex­clud­ing trans­porta­tion, or­ders rose by 1.6 per cent. The fig­ures were slight­ly low­er than an­a­lysts had ex­pect­ed, and they helped push shares low­er on Wall Street.

In ear­ly trad­ing, the Dow Jones in­dex was down al­most 50 points at 13,149. On Tues­day, fig­ures sug­gest­ed con­sumer con­fi­dence slipped in March, while house prices fell in Jan­u­ary, al­beit at a slow­er pace than in the pre­vi­ous month. "The econ­o­my is slow­ly im­prov­ing, but it is def­i­nite­ly a halt­ing re­cov­ery where we're not ac­cel­er­at­ing to any great de­gree," said Liam Dal­ton at Ax­iom Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment in New York.

BBC