Market News & Headlines >> USDA Still Working on Export Portal Upgrade

USDA continues to work on upgrades to its export sales reporting system but will not roll out its new internet portal before the spring of 2024, an official with USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service said on Tuesday.

Exporters are required to report sales of U.S. agricultural commodities to USDA, which reports weekly export sales each Thursday. The reports are closely watched by grain and livestock traders. USDA is still refining its new system as it collaborates with exporters following a failed roll-out in August 2022 that sent traders scrambling and delayed export sales reports for three weeks.

"We don't expect anything to go live until spring of 2024 at the earliest," Paul Trupo, an acting deputy administrator with the Foreign Agricultural Service, said at a USDA data meeting in Chicago.

USDA is modernizing its export sales reporting system to comply with new information technology protocols and enhance security features, but once the updates are complete, "exporters and users should find the new system as close to identical as possible to the current system," Trupo said, according to Reuters News Service.