Growth Is Seen for G.D.P. as Wholesale Inventories Rise WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Wholesale inventories rose solidly in February as petroleum recorded its biggest increase in a year, the Commerce Department said Tuesday, prompting analysts to raise their estimates for first-quarter economic growth. Total wholesale inventories increased 0.9 percent to a record $478.9 billion, the department said, after an upward revision of 0.6 percent in January. Inventories are a critical component of changes in the gross domestic product figures. A rise in wholesale stocks in February and the upward revisions to the prior month's data prompted economists, including those at Goldman Sachs and Barclays, to raise their forecasts for first-quarter gross domestic product growth. "The result implies more inventory building in the first quarter than we had previously assumed," Goldman Sachs economists said in a research note. "We therefore raised our tracking estimate" of first-quarter G.D.P. growth by two-tenths, to 2.3 percent annualized. We now expect that inventory accumulation added a small amount to overall G.D.P. growth during the quarter. Economists polled by Reuters had expected stocks of unsold goods at wholesalers to rise 0.5 percent in February after a previously reported 0.4 percent gain in January. Inventories accounted for much of the economy's annualized percent growth rate of 3 percent in the fourth quarter. Economists feared that businesses had little appetite to continue adding to inventories, holding back G.D.P. growth in the first three months of 2012. The value of petroleum stocks rose 5.6 percent in February, the largest gain since February 2011, after rising 2.8 percent in January. Automobile inventories fell 0.9 percent in February, reflecting strong demand for motor vehicles, after rising 0.6 percent in January. Overall sales rebounded 1.2 percent after being flat in January. That was well above economists" expectations for a 0.7 percent increase.