FMC to look for additional opportunities to provide regulatory relief

Federal Maritime Commission Acting Chairman Michael Khouri said he is committed to eliminating rules that are outdated or impede the efficient operation of business.    Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) Acting Chairman Michael Khouri said that following actions by the agency last month to reduce regulatory requirements for service contracts and NVOCC service arrangements (NSAs), he intends for the agency to look for additional opportunities to provide regulatory relief within its authority.
   “I am committed to continuing to identify rules that are outdated, or impede the efficient operation of business, and eliminating them whenever possible. And further, I am committed to facilitating a process that petitions for relief filed with the Commission get more expeditious consideration,” he told the annual conference of the National Customs Brokers and Forwarders Association of America (NCBFAA) in New Orleans on Wednesday.
   Khouri said that changes to service contract and NSA regulations approved by the FMC, which will take effect May 5, demonstrate, “the benefits that can be achieved by simply asking, ‘Is there a better, less burdensome, less intrusive, less costly way to do this?’
   “I intend that the Commission make that question standard operating procedure,” he said. “Efficiency, innovation and optimal economic conditions thrive in a marketplace that is not overly regulated and competition is encouraged and preserved.
   “The FMC must focus its resources on programs and initiatives that facilitate and foster competition, thus leading to lower prices, innovation in services and operations throughout the supply chain, and creating increased choices for consumers of ocean transportation services,” he said.
    The agency will “work to identify rules and regulations of the commission that are outdated, burdensome, and/or add unnecessary costs to doing business; determine a path how to best address those targets for regulatory reform; and establish a timeline for remedy that is as rapid as possible – ideally months as opposed to years,” he said.
    FMC Managing Director Karen Gregory “is standing up a Regulatory Reform Task Force that will work to identify burdensome, unnecessary, and outdated directives and recommend how they should be remedied,” Khouri said. While the task force will be an internal agency group, he said he has discussed with Gregory his “preference that the public must have reasonable opportunity to provide input to the process – and by that, I mean input on the front end, not just input after we issue the normal publication in the Federal Register of a notice of proposed rulemaking.”
    The NCBFAA submitted Petition No. P2-15 to the FMC in April 2015 asking for a rulemaking that would allow inclusion of economic terms beyond rates into Negotiated Rate Arrangements (NRAs) and modification of NRAs at anytime upon agreement between NVOCCs and their customers.
    Khouri said that because the petition is under active consideration, he was prohibited from discussing the matter, but told his audience “your petition is front and center.”
    Another possible area of reform is “tariff filing by all regulated entities,” he said. “When one asks the question – where and how does the ‘filed rate doctrine’ fit with twenty-first century container shipping practices – the answers get weaker and weaker, down to faint whispers. I understand and appreciate the utility of rules tariffs, but rate tariff – not so clear.”