At the May 2017 Board meeting, the Board approved Reasonableness Procedures to be used to determine the ‘reasonableness’ of requests for: (1) advance payments, (2) reimbursement of research and development costs, (3) reimbursement of maintenance costs, and (4) approval of user fees submitted to the Board. After the initial publication of the Reasonableness Procedures in November 2016, stakeholders were provided two different opportunities, in December 2016 and April 2017, to provide comments and suggestions for changes to the Reasonableness Procedures. Comments were received and revisions were made to incorporate some of the suggestions.

Minor revisions were also made to the Concept Proposal Procedures to make them consistent with the Reasonableness Procedures.

The revised Reasonableness Procedures and Concept Proposal Procedures can be found on the RMA website at www.rma.usda.gov/fcic/privatesector.html.

Both of the new procedures must be used for all Concept Proposal submissions and the Reasonableness Procedures must be used by submitters when submitting any request for: (1) advance payments (Concept Proposals), (2) reimbursement of research and development expenses (including within all 508h submissions), (3) reimbursement of maintenance costs, or (4) approval of user fees.

DISPOSAL DATE:
December 31, 2017.