Justification for change memo

United States
Department of
Agriculture
Farm and
Foreign
Agricultural
Services
Foreign
Agricultural
Service
1400
Independence
Avenue, SW
AgStop 1021
Washington,
DC
20250-1021

September 20, 2012

TO:

Andrew Perraut,
Office of Management and Budget, USDA

THROUGH: Ruth Brown,
Office of the Chief Information Officer, USDA

FROM:

Ron Lord
Director, Import Policies and Export Reporting Division, FAS

SUBJECT: Non-substantive Change Request to increase burden hours for information
collection authorized under OMB No. 0551-0025 due to Panama Trade Promotion Act.

FAS requests OMB’s approval for a non-substantive change to adjust the burden for the
approved information collection (IC) for the Specialty Sugar Certificate program. The burden
will increase after the United States implements the U.S.-Panama Trade Promotion Agreement
because additional specialty sugar certificates will be required to accommodate Panama’s
increased specialty sugar access.
The United States will likely soon announce implementation of the U.S.-Panama Trade
Promotion Agreement (TPA). Under the TPA, the United States committed to administer
Panama’s specialty sugar tariff-rate quota utilizing specialty sugar certificates.
It is estimated that the additional tariff-rate quota for specialty sugar provided for Panama will
generate requests for 1 additional specialty sugar certificate per year, and it is estimated that the
form takes 2 hours to fill out. Thus the burden under the Paperwork Reduction Act, OMB No.
0551-0025, is estimated to increase by 2 hours, or $78.50.