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            Puerto Rico's Retail Establishments Sell
          $17 Billion in Goods, Census Bureau Reports

  Puerto Rico's retail establishments sold $17.1 billion worth of goods
and employed 154,000 people at 14,582 locations in 1997, the Commerce
Department's Census Bureau reported today.

  Food stores led all retailers with $3.6 billion in sales, one-fifth
(21 percent) of the island's total retail sales.

  Puerto Rico's 2,809 wholesale establishments reported sales of 
$12.6 billion in 1997; and service establishments, providing business,
personal, amusement or other selected services, recorded receipts of 
$5.8 billion at 8,048 locations.

  Other highlights of the report, 1997 Economic Census of Outlying Areas:
Puerto Rico -- Geographic Areas Statistics:  Retail Trade, Wholesale
Trade, and Service Industries:

 - In 1997, Puerto Rico's retail sector reported an annual payroll of $1.6
   billion, up from $1.1 billion in 1992; service establishments' annual
   payroll was $1.5 billion, up from $893.6 million in 1992; and the
   wholesale sector's payroll was $850.9 million,an increase of $177.7
   million over the 1992 payroll of $673.2 million.

 - Wholesale trade establishments employed 40,000 people. Groceries and
   related products were the largest wholesalers with $2.8 billion in
   sales followed by wholesalers of drugs, drug proprietaries and
   druggists' sundries with $1.5 billion in sales. 

 - The service industries sector employed a total of 111,000 people at
   8,048 locations. Business services was the leading service industry,
   with $2.3 billion in receipts, followed by engineering, research, and
   management services, with $805.4 million in receipts.

  The 1997 Economic Census of Outlying Areas, which covered Puerto Rico,
Virgin Islands, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, was conducted by
mail. Data were collected only for businesses that employed at least one
person.

  Released on the Internet, the Puerto Rico report provides data on sales
or receipts, payroll, number of employees for retail and wholesale trade
and service industries, operating expenses and value of ending inventories
for wholesalers and number of rooms and sources of receipts for the
island's hotels.
                                
  Data for the 1997 Economic Census of Puerto Rico were reported on a
Standard Industrial Classification basis, but future censuses will use the
North American Industry Classification System. The census is conducted
every five years in years ending in 2 and 7.

  The report will be available in printed form and on CD-ROM in early
2001. Another report on construction industries will be issued a few
months later.

  The data are subject to nonsampling errors. Nonsampling errors can be
attributed to many sources:  inability to identify all cases in the actual
universe; definition and classification difficulties; differences in the
interpretation of questions; errors in recording or coding the data
obtained; and other errors of collection, response, coverage, processing
and estimation for missing or misreported data.