‘93/’94 Year-End Review and Outlook : Industry Outlook : Continuing low-grade growth in the national economy, coupled with hopes for stability--if not expansion--in California, is the backdrop for the year in business. Here is an assessment of key industries’ prospects.

Chris Kraul covered South America for the Los Angeles Times from his base in Bogota, Colombia. He joined the paper in 1987 and was business editor of the San Diego edition until it closed in 1992. He then began covering the border and Mexican economies until his assignment to The Times’ Mexico City bureau in 2001. He reopened the paper’s Bogota bureau in 2006. He has also covered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is a graduate of the University of South Florida and also has been a reporter at the San Jose Mercury News, San Diego Union-Tribune and the San Diego Business Journal.