U.S. CENSUS EXPECTS SMALL INCREASE IN PAPER SEDS FROM FORMER AERP FILERS

U.S. CENSUS EXPECTS SMALL INCREASE IN PAPER SEDS FROM FORMER AERP FILERS       The U.S. Census Bureau says it expects a minimal increase in paper shipper’s export declarations in the wake of shutting down its former Automated Export Reporting Program at midnight, Dec. 31.
      Many of the country’s largest exporters and forwarders once used the 30-year-old system to electronically file their export declarations on a monthly basis to Census. The system has been replaced by Customs’ Automated Export System (AES).
      So far, 204 companies have successfully moved from the Automated Export Reporting Program (AERP) to AES. About 55 other firms have submitted letters of intent to join AES at the beginning of the year.
      Only 24 former AERP filers are expected to return to filing their export declarations on paper to Census. These filers are considered by the agency to be mostly small exporters and forwarders.
      “We don’t want the extra paper, but we can handle it,” said C. Harvey Monk Jr., chief of Census’ Foreign Trade Division. The agency processes about 400,000 paper export declarations a month at its Jeffersonville, Ind., data processing center.
      Census plans to continue marketing AES and its Internet version, AESDirect, to exporters and forwarders during the year. “We’re going to keep after the paper filers,” Monk said.