No deal yet on raising MSP stipends

An official from the U.S. Agency for International Development said discussions about the Maritime Security Program are ongoing.    Testimony during a hearing on U.S. international food aid held by the U.S. House of Representative’s Agriculture Committee on Wednesday shed little light on how changes in food aid policy might affect the U.S. Merchant Marine and whether stipends under the Maritime Security Program will be raised.
   Agriculture Committee Chairman K. Michael Conaway questioned Thomas H. Staal, an acting assistant administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), about reports that his agency and the U.S. Maritime Administration (MARAD) have an agreement or understanding having to do with cargo preference.
   Staal said that his agency has requested additional “flexibility” in President Obama’s 2016 budget on how to provide food aid besides “in kind” aid where the government purchases food from U.S. farmers and transports it to those in need abroad, often using U.S.-flag ships, and providing an important source of business for many companies and mariners.
   Since 2010, USAID has been using some funds to buy food locally and regionally and to provide targeted cash transfers or food vouchers so that people in food crises could buy food directly in local markets, Staal noted in his testimony.
   “We have been in dialogue with a variety of stakeholders — the maritime industry, agriculture committee, NGOs, the agriculture commodity providers. So there is a discussion and dialogue going on. There is no finalized deal, there is no MOU,” he said.
   Some sources say there are discussions of raising MARAD’s Maritime Security Program stipend for owners of 60 U.S.-flag ships who agree to make their vessels available in time of war from the  current $3.1 million to as much as $5 million in exchange for allowing more cargo to be spent on local and regional purchases. U.S.-flag shipowners who do not receive MSP stipends worry they could become increasingly less competitive and that some vessels would have to be converted into foreign flag ships.
   Conaway asked Stall, “Limiting it to the Maritime Administration — no deal, nothing has gone on that’s in writing, no handshakes, nothing like that we should be aware of?”
   “That’s correct,” Stall said. “We are definitely in discussion with them and we continue those discussions to find better ways to effectively use the resources we have and in fact we would love to have additional dialogue with your committee, with the members, with the staff to get your input on how to reach these objectives.”
   Conaway pressed Stall on the subject, asking if there had been “some sort of deal with the maritime industry regarding what we have been told is an amount of $95 million in subsidies to the Maritime Security Program, ostensibly provided in exchange for maritime support for your request to convert 45 percent in kind aid for cash assistance — have you done that…Have you offered them $1.5 million per ship for the 60 ships?”
   “We have no specific offers,” explained Staal, “it’s just a dialogue, a discussion that continues trying the best way to achieve the flexibility the president has requested.”