[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 9 (Monday, March 6, 2000)]
[Pages 437-438]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Statement on the First Estimate of E-Commerce Retail Sales

March 2, 2000

    Today the Commerce Department released the first-ever official 
estimate of retail E-commerce sales--or ``E-tail'' sales. This is a 
historical landmark that symbolizes and helps measure our transition to 
a new information economy. We first started keeping track of retail 
sales on a monthly basis in 1951. The announcement that E-tail sales 
over the Internet and other electronic networks reached $5.3 billion in 
the fourth quarter of 1999 is an important step to ensure that we have 
accurate and timely information about the economy in the 21st century.
    This is only the latest evidence of the dramatic contribution that 
the Internet, information technology, and E-commerce have made to what 
is now the longest economic expansion in history. When I became 
President in 1993, there were 50 sites on the World Wide Web. Today, 
there are more than 10 million. The information technology

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industry now accounts for fully one-third of our economic growth, and 
the jobs it creates pay almost 80 percent more than the private sector 
average. Using the Internet, families can obtain lower prices and better 
choices for everything from groceries to home mortgages to automobiles. 
Our goal must be to continue to support the basic research that has 
allowed the Internet to flourish, to enable every American to enjoy the 
benefits and opportunities of the new economy, and to ensure that the 
privacy of individuals is protected in the information age.