Mubasher: The US Census Bureau, the US Department of Housing, the Urban Development on Friday jointly published residential construction statistics for last March.

Privately-owned housing starts reached a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.139 million starts in March, which is 0.3% lower than the revised February estimate of 1.142 million, and 14.2% below the rate of 1.327 million seen in the same month of the previous year, according to the data.

Privately-owned housing units, authorised under building permits declined 1.7% month-on-month to an adjusted annual rate of 1.269 million in March.

Privately-owned housing completions fell 1.9% to an adjusted annual rate of 1.313 million completions during the reported month, from the revised estimate of 1.338 million in the prior month, but 6.8% up from 1.229 million a year ago.

Permits for single-family housing units went down month-on-month to 808,000 permits in March, while authorisations for five-or-more unit buildings recorded 425,000, the data stated.

Completed single-family housing units surged 11.9% to 938,000 units last March, compared with the prior month when they totalled 838,000.

By 12:38 pm GMT, the US dollar index went down 0.12% to 97.3590.