Census Bureau February 4, 2022 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Census Bureau published an Advance Notice of Proposed Rule Making (ANPRM) in the Federal Register on September 17, 2020 to request comments on the overall impact of the removal of the Electronic Export Information (EEI) filing requirements for shipments between the United States, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The Census Bureau has decided to continue the current EEI filing requirement for Puerto Rico and the USVI and continue to publish the U.S. Trade with Puerto Rico and U.S. Possessions (FT-895) Publication Series. This decision was made after careful consideration based on the feedback received from the ANPRM and discussions between the Census Bureau and several stakeholders. The Census Bureau will continue to collect the EEI because there is no alternative data source that yields the same high- quality data for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The EEI data meets the Census Bureau's statistical objectives and the needs of its data users, including the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), who produces the Gross Domestic Product estimates for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, which is a Principal Federal Economic Indicator. Both the Census Bureau and BEA are open to considering proposed alternative data sources which will be evaluated, tested, and verified to determine whether the data meet the statistical objectives of the current EEI.