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WASHINGTON (UPI)—The government's leading economic indicators dropped 1.8 percent last month, the Commerce Department reported Monday — a grim forecast of still more unemployment and business setbacks.

The Commerce Depart- ment said October's decline completed the first con- secutive three-month string

of losses for the composite

index since the one that

pointed to last year’s recession.

In a _ separate report Monday, the department

said the nation’s trade deficit for October grew to $5.3 billion. It was the third month this year of a trade deficit above $5 billion, leading department experts to predict a year-end total of “several billions” beyond last

Coast fishing industry ‘collapsing’

OTTAWA (UPC)—The Newfoundland government helped produce a near crisis in the east coast fishing industry by encouraging over-expansion of fish processing plants, Fishing Minister Romeo Leblanc said Monday.

Leblanc said he tried to slow down the plant ex- pansion and protect the inland fishing industry but Newfoundland Fishing Minister Jim Morgan $ap- proved permits which in- creased capacity by 230 percent since 1976.

The federal government also refused federal aid for plant expansion but the banks stepped in and loaned $7.5 billion, Leblanc said.

“The banks went against the warning of my depart- ment but there is nothing you can do when they have so much moncy,” he said.

Leblanc is to meet with provincial fishing ministers in Ottawa next Monday and will ask them to draft an orderly fishing plan that will

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Conservative MP John Fraser said the east coast fishing industry was nearing a “complete economic collapse” while Conservative MP Jim McGrath demanded Leblanc show some leadership to the industry.

He said the problem wouldn't be solved by “band- aid financial aid.”

Leblanc said the industry had serious problems but the causes were “not simple and not related.”

There was a decrease in American demand for fish and the industry was also hampered by high interest rates.

The inland fishing industry also suffered dramatically when fish did not come near the shore because of ex- treme cold water, Leblanc said.

Leblanc said an orderly marketing plan would case many of the problems but he needed the co-operation of the provincial ministers.

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year’s $36.4 billion deficit.

Total exports, upon which one of every cight American manufacturing jobs depends, were down 3.1 percent to $19 billion, while imports were up 9.4 percent to $24 .3 billion.

The drop in the leading indicators “points to further moderate weakness in the economy,” said Robert Ortner, the Commerce

Department’s chief economist. “The layoff rate accounted for about 40 percent of it.”

Another economist, Allen Sinai, vice president of the private forecasing firm Data Resources Inc., said the figure “suggests we have another three to five months of the recession to go.”

A25 - Wednesday, December 2, 1981 - North Shore News

The composite index of leading economic indicators for October, set at 128.1 percent of the 1967 figure, is

adjusted for inflation, the pace of deliveries, contracts and orders for plant and equipment and changes in

designed to forecast total liquid assets.

economic trends in the next Four of the 10 available

several weeks to months. indicators improved Led downward by the somewhat: average work-

layoff rate, fivé other week, ‘crude materials

components also declined: prices, money supply and

building permits, new orders stock prices.

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