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Monday, October 10, 2011

Pierluisi Supports Federal Efforts to Help Puerto Rico Government Collect and Publish Reliable Economic Statistics

WASHINGTON, DC- Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi is strongly supporting efforts by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) to help the government of Puerto Rico collect and publish high-quality statistics about economic activity on the Island. The BEA will be visiting Puerto Rico later this month to provide technical and other assistance to Puerto Rico officials.

“Improving economic statistics is an essential part of our effort to promote growth and create jobs. Better economic data will help the government of Puerto Rico to more accurately estimate tax revenues, to enhance the Island’s budgeting process, and to assess the impact of its past policy decisions and to make sound policy decisions down the line,” said the Resident Commissioner.

The government of Puerto Rico, led by the Secretary of the Department of Economic Development and Commerce (DDEC), José Pérez-Riera, has been working with the BEA since 2010 to establish a better system on the Island to collect and publish reliable economic data.

The long-term objective of the BEA’s efforts is to expand the definition of the United States’ Gross Domestic Product (GDP)—which is the market value of all final goods and services produced in the country in a particular period—to include the GDP of Puerto Rico and the other U.S. territories. At present, the definition of U.S. GDP only includes the value of goods and services produced in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The definition cannot be expanded to incorporate the territories, however, until the statistics and methodologies in each of the territories are sufficiently reliable to warrant the territories’ inclusion. BEA’s goal is to get Puerto Rico’s economic statistics to the point that they are on par with the 50 states.

This past March, a team of experts from BEA traveled to Puerto Rico to make a preliminary assessment of Puerto Rico’s statistics and methodologies and to determine how they could be improved. The BEA team met with representatives from the four Puerto Rico agencies that are jointly responsible for collecting economic statistics on the Island: DDEC, the Puerto Rico Planning Board, the Government Development Bank, and the Institute of Statistics.

The Resident Commissioner has highlighted for the federal government the importance of including Puerto Rico in the statistical products it publishes. Recently, Pierluisi wrote a letter to the heads of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), pointing out that these federal agencies publish little if any data on cancer in Puerto Rico. In the letter, the Resident Commissioner urged the agencies to make concerted efforts—in coordination with the Puerto Rico Central Cancer Registry—to begin publishing this information without delay, with the goal of collecting and publishing the same cancer information for Puerto Rico that is already published for the 50 states and D.C., and including that Puerto Rico-specific information in all national cancer totals.