SIMIC

THE Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) has announced its intention to request a 14 per cent increase in its fiscal 2024 budget as it faces new shipping regulations and heightened demand for market oversight, reports New York's Journal of Commerce.
The proposed budget of US$43.7 million includes provisions for hiring 23 new employees, with FMC chairman Daniel Maffei expected to formally request the budget increase before the House of Representatives Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in late March.
Although the current fiscal year has seen a larger budget increase of $5.8 million, the FMC claims that the proposed budget for 2024 is one of the agency's most significant increases in recent years.
Most of the increase will be used to hire more staff, with the FMC expecting to have 163 full-time employees by 2024.
The agency hired an additional 20 full-time employees in fiscal 2023 to manage the Covid crisis-related supply chain issues.
Since then, the FMC's responsibilities have increased with enacting the Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 2022 (OSRA-22).
"Enforcing OSRA-22 will be among the things the new employees do, but it's not the only thing," said agency spokesman John DeCrosta.
"It's about helping exporters, consumer assistance, making sure market participants behave according to the law, and that there's no market collusion occurring," he said.