By Paulo Trevisani
The Agriculture Department said Thursday it is retracting weekly export data for U.S. agricultural products after a new publishing system released figures that traders said seemed incorrect.
The agency was expected to publish last week's export sales report at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time, but the data was released about an hour later.
"During today's launch, [the Foreign Agricultural Service] encountered challenges that affected the physical dissemination of the data as well as data quality," the USDA said in a statement. "As a result, the agency has taken the system offline and is retracting the weekly export sales information disseminated earlier today."
The USDA said the system, called Export Sales Reporting and Maintenance System, is the one through which U.S. exporters are required, by law, to report any sales transactions entered into with buyers outside the U.S. for a number of key commodities.
The weekly export sales report includes data on barley, beef, cattle hides, corn, cotton, oats, pork, rice, sorghum, soybeans, soyoil and wheat.
Earlier in the day, commodities research firm AgResource had called attention to a surprisingly high reported export sales of 4.7 million metric tons of soybeans.
"The massive weekly soy sale has the bulls crying that something is wrong," AgResource said in a newsletter.
The USDA said it is "taking immediate steps to rectify" the situation.
Write to Paulo Trevisani at paulo.trevisani@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
08-25-22 1742ET
