Section 16 of the Shipping Act of 1984, 46 U.S.C. § 40103, authorizes the Commission to exempt by order or regulation âany class of agreements between persons subject to this [Act] or any specified activity of those persons from any requirement of this [Act] if the Commission finds that the exemption will not result in substantial reduction in competition or be detrimental to commerce.â The Commission may attach conditions to any exemption and may, by order, revoke an exemption. In 46 CFR Part 532, the Commission exempted non-vessel-operating common carriers (NVOCCs) from the tariff rate publication requirements of Part 520, and allowed an NVOCC to enter into an NVOCC Negotiated Rate Arrangement (NRA) in lieu of publishing its tariff rate(s), provided the NVOCC posts a prominent notice in its rules tariff invoking the NRA exemption and provides electronic access to its rules tariff to the public free of charge. This information collection corresponds to the rules tariff prominent notice and the requirement to make its tariff publicly available free of charge.
The burden estimate for this collection has decreased substantially since it was last submitted. The Commission extended the tariff publication exemption contained in 46 CFR part 532 to foreign-based registered NVOCCs, the number of which is currently 1,405. Accordingly, NVOCCs eligible to take advantage of the exemption and use negotiated rate arrangements was increased by 1,405 since the Commission issued its last rulemaking amending part 532. It was expected that this additional group of NVOCCs, who were granted the ability to utilize this exemption, could raise the percentage of NVOCCs using it considerably; however, this has not been the case. In fact, although it was anticipated that the majority of all NVOCCs would use the exemption, only 25% of NVOCCs, which is 1,295 NVOCCs in total, both licensed and foreign registered, have published the requisite rule to use NRAs. In addition, of those 25%, only 3% opted to use NRAs exclusively. The remaining 22% of NVOCCs utilize a combination of tariff rates and NRAs. The recordkeeping burden associated with tariff rates is already accounted for under the information collection in Part 520, Carrier Automated Tariffs, thus the prior burden estimate was higher than appropriate. For these reasons, the number of annual instances and thereby the respondent burden has been reduced from the previous 5,970 person-hours to 1,365 person-hours.
On behalf of this Federal agency, I certify that the collection of information encompassed by this request complies with 5 CFR 1320.9 and the related provisions of 5 CFR 1320.8(b)(3).
The following is a summary of the topics, regarding the proposed collection of information, that the certification covers:
(i) Why the information is being collected;
(ii) Use of information;
(iii) Burden estimate;
(iv) Nature of response (voluntary, required for a benefit, or mandatory);
(v) Nature and extent of confidentiality; and
(vi) Need to display currently valid OMB control number;
If you are unable to certify compliance with any of these provisions, identify the item by leaving the box unchecked and explain the reason in the Supporting Statement.
0071 2016 OMB Extension FR 30 day notice - FINAL.docx
Modification of Tariff Invoking Exemption - NRAs exclusively