They are expected to show that manufacturers are cutting prices.Economists expect the figures to show prices of goods leaving the factory gate dropped by 0.3 per cent, piling further pressure on the sector.Last week it emerged manufacturers’ rates of return had slumped to the lowest level in nine years because profits were squeezed between falling prices and rising wage bills.Jonathan Loynes, chief UK economist at the consultancy group Capital Economics, said the only relief was an expected 5 per cent fall in raw materials costs.On Thursday, the British Chambers of Commerce will round off a gloomy week with its survey of small and medium-sized companies across the UK.Analysts will focus on the breakdown of the services sector in the wake of its report three months ago that revealed a slump in export and domestic orders which, at the time, was attributed to foot-and-mouth.David Page, UK economist at the stockbroker Investec, said the markets want to know whether services firms were still hiring. The Bank of England would be concerned with a poor service sector outlook and that could lead to pressure to cut rates below 4.5 per cent, he said.. Traditional agency-style mail order business, targeted at poorer consumers, has suffered a dramatic slump in recent years, new research states. Traditional agency-style mail order business, targeted at poorer consumers, has suffered a dramatic slump in recent years, new research states.
Although agency catalogues, offered by the likes of Argos, Freemans and Great Universal Stores, tended to be more expensive than high-street products, they offered home shopping with interest-free credit, which made it attractive to less-affluent customers, who may not possess credit cards.This business relied on community networks, with one community member becoming the “agent” and taking orders from the others in the neighbourhood.

That agent earned a commission.Customers have instead gone for direct mail order, such as the Next Directory, part of the Next retail group chaired by Sir Brian Pitman.Consumers have also been enticed away from home shopping agents by the new breed of high street discount stores. These offer goods at the same price as the high street but typically not supply on interest-free credit. A report by Verdict, the retail consultants, found that agency catalogues accounted for £3.7bn in turnover in 2000, or 33 per cent of the market, down from 54 per cent of the home shopping market in 1995.Direct catalogue business over the same period doubled, from 16 per cent of the sector to 32 per cent, worth £3.6bn.The decline for agency business has been particularly severe over the last two years, with the sector slipping by 6 per cent in 1999 and over 10 per cent of sales last year.Verdict said: “We believe that the agency operators have been far too slow, both to develop new catalogue products and to make use of new customer information software.”. The City was quietly seething this weekend over the Government’s demolition of Railtrack, the privatised company which owned the UK rail network’s track, signals and stations. The City was quietly seething this weekend over the Government’s demolition of Railtrack, the privatised company which owned the UK rail network’s track, signals and stations.
Ernst & Young, the accountancy firm, is to be appointed administrator of the stricken company, with a brief within six months to pour its assets into a private company which will in effect be controlled by Stephen Byers, the Secretary of State for Transport.”It is very fortunate that the privatisation process is virtually over,” said one corporate financier last night, “because Tony Blair would have next to no chance of selling anything else to the City after this d?cle.”But while Railtrack was claiming over the weekend that it did not know the Government was finally going to pull the rug from under its feet until late on Friday, it is clear that senior ministers had decided several weeks ago to withdraw financial support.Despite this, Railtrack shares continued to trade and last week it rose by a total of 19p, adding £98m to the group’s market value. By the close of business on Friday it was worth £1.4bn, with the shares at 280p.

Trading was expected to be suspended at 7am this morning, and it will be up to Ernst & Young to decide how much to repay to shareholders. However, it is known that the Government was angry that the Railtrack board paid a £120m dividend this year, so institutional investors fear the administrators may be encouraged to take a tough line.In addition to 300,000 private investors, the biggest shareholders are Morley Fund Management, part of the insurance group CGNU, and the South African-based Franklin Templeton Investment, each with 4 per cent. They are followed by PDFM (2.9 per cent); Legal & General (2.5 per cent); Standard Life (2.4 per cent); Merrill Lynch Investment Management (2 per cent); and Barclays Global Investors (1.9 per cent).None was willing to comment until they had digested yesterday’s announcement, but a senior officer of one leading investor said the government may have breached the spirit of the Financial Services Authority’s requirement that there should be “timely disclosure of all relevant information” in relation to all quoted companies.While the Government is naturally not subject to the FSA’s rules, Railtrack shareholders could claim that the spirit of those rules may have been breached last Tuesday when the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, told the Labour party conference: “There are areas where the private sector has worked well, and areas where, as with parts of the railways, it has been a disaster.”Railtrack shares were floated in 1996 at 390p, and peaked at £17.68 before the Ladbroke Grove disaster two years ago.The Dutch securities house ABN Amro presciently said in June that Railtrack could be worthless – but only within four years, not the four months that it has taken.Chris Tarry, an analyst at Commerzbank, said that the move was a shock. “Although Railtrack has always been on a knife-edge, nobody expected the Government to pull the rug out from under Railtrack quite like this…. Fingers of blame will now be pointed in every direction and Railtrack management is bound to come in for more stick…. This is where economics and politics collide.”Government officials are believed to have spent much of yesterday ringingplayers in the industry, to give assurances that committed spending projects will not be interrupted.