ISTANBUL

US new durable goods orders increased 0.5% in September from the previous month, according to data released Wednesday by the Census Bureau.

New orders for manufactured durable goods, which measure the change in the value of new purchase orders placed with manufacturers, climbed $1.5 billion to $313.7 billion in September.

This followed a 3% growth rate in the previous month and matched market expectations for September.

"Transportation equipment, also up two consecutive months, led the increase, $0.4 billion or 0.4% to $110.7 billion," the bureau said in a statement.

Vehicles (+0.4% vs. +0.6%) and defense aircraft (+30.9% vs. +48.3%) drove a 0.4% increase in demand for transportation equipment, compared with 8.0% in the prior month.

Electrical equipment, appliances, and components (+1.5% vs. +0.6%), primary metals (+1.4% vs. +0.5%), computers and electronic devices (+0.5% vs. -1.1%), fabricated metal products (+0.5%, unchanged), and machinery (+0.1% vs. +2.2%) were among the other industries that reported improvements.

Excluding transportation, new orders were up 0.6%, and excluding defense, new orders increased 0.1%.