Stocks may open lower Friday amid concerns about oil prices and U.S. consumer inflation data.

U.S. consumer prices rose at the slowest pace in four months in April as energy prices stabilized, suggesting that inflation remains safely below levels that might spur the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates rapidly.

The consumer-price index rose 0.2% in April, less than half the rate recorded in March, the Labor Department said today. The slowdown reflected a price deceleration in most major expenditure categories except housing and education.

The closely watched core index, which excludes volatile food and energy items, rose 0.3% after a 0.4% gain in March.

Economists had expected a 0.3% increase in the overall index and a 0.2% increase in the core index.

In a separate release the Commerce Department reported that U.S. business inventories increased 0.7% to a seasonally adjusted $1.205 trillion in March, after a revised 0.8% advance in February,

Economists had expected inventories to grow only 0.4%.

Here at home, Statistics Canada released its monthly survey of manufacturing. Factory floors were humming in March as manufacturers posted broad-based gains, StatsCan said.

Shipments soared 3.4% to $47.7 billion, inventories continued to accumulate and manufacturers’ backlog of unfilled orders climbed for the third straight month.

March’s big boost in shipments, coupled with the small rise in inventories, triggered a sharp drop in the inventory-to-shipment ratio. According to StatsCan, from February’s 1.27, the ratio fell to 1.23 in March, a nine-year low.

The ratio is a key measure of the time, in months, that would be required in order to exhaust inventories if shipments were to remain at their current level.

Telus Corp. is making a bid for the runt of the litter in Canada’s mobile phone business, offering $1.1 billion cash for Microcell Telecommunications Inc., operator of the Fido network. The Telus offer was announced after financial markets closed Thursday.

In other news from Thursday, Maritime Life reported a fourfold increase in quarterly profits on higher revenue. The subsidiary of global insurance giant Manulife Financial Corp. said it earned $33.1 million in the quarter ended March 31, compared with $7.9 million in the same quarter last year.

In Friday’s earnings news, Bema Gold Corp. reported a first-quarter loss of US$14.2 million after an US$8.5-million writedown for a divested property in Arizona. The loss for the quarter ended March 31 amounted to US4¢ a share and contrasted with a profit of US$8 million or US2.9¢ a share a year earlier.

Overnight in Asia, markets closed mixed. Tokyo’s Nikkei rose 24.53 points, or 0.23 per cent, to 10,849.63 points.

In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng Index fell 120.08 points, or 1.05%, to 11,276.86, its lowest level in seven months.

Meanwhile, Indian stocks plunged on fears Sonia Gandhi’s leftist allies would wind back economic reforms after her Congress party won a stunning upset election victory.

On Thursday, the North American markets closed mostly lower as oil prices hit a new all-time closing high above US$41 a barrel.

The S&P/TSX composite index closed down 11.06 points to 8,176.61, while the S&P/TSX Venture composite index fell 18.21 to 1,546.25.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average lost 34.42 points at 10,010.74. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index broke even, edging up 0.44 of a point to 1,926.03, while the broader S&P 500 index slipped 0.84 of a point to 1,096.44.