News
The U.S. Federal Maritime Commission has voted unanimously to amend its rules involving Service Contracts and NVOCC Service Arrangements (NSAs) in order to ease regulatory burdens and make the agency's rules more consistent with how the ocean shipping business is now practiced.
The commission first initiated action in this matter in February 2016 with the publication of an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. A Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) was issued in August 2016. Certain proposed changes in the NPRM were not adopted by the commission as they would not necessarily have decreased business burdens.
The rulemaking makes the following key changes to commission regulations:
-- It allows the filing of sequential service contract amendments with the FMC within 30 days of the effective date of an agreement between shipper and carrier.
-- It allows up to 30 days for filing NVOCC Service Arrangement Agreements with the FMC after their effective date.
-- It allows additional time to correct technical data transmission errors from 48 hours to 30 days; and,
-- It extends the period in which one can file a service contract correction request from 45 days to 180 days.
