61.   Gross margins were hurt by price cuts as the House of Fraser unloaded excess inventories from closed stores and departments.

62.   Greenspan, speaking at a news briefing at the International Monetary Conference in Seattle, said businesses are working off excess inventories built up earlier this year.

63.   He listed the oil on Rebound, an exchange for excess inventory of finished consumer products.

64.   However, the problems of excess inventory should be largely corrected by the end of the September quarter, he said.

65.   However, they also said GM might have had to cut back production anyway because it had several weeks of excess inventory.

66.   If sales do not pick up, many retailers, burdened with excess inventories , may have to take big markdowns at the end of the summer.

67.   In addition, the company also has excess corduroy inventory.

68.   In fact, as demand from consumers leveled off last year, American businesses were slow to cut production, and ended up with huge excess inventories.

69.   In the past three years, the whisky loch has begun to shrink as production was cut and excess inventories unloaded, yet prices show little sign of recovery.

70.   In the short term, however, growth is likely to be constrained as companies continue to seek to remove excess inventories from warehouses, the report said.