Foreign-Trade Zones Board May 2008 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Foreign-Trade Zones (FTZ) Board is inviting public comment on a staff proposal to make available an alternative framework for participating grantees to designate and manage their general-purpose FTZ sites. A key result of this proposal, which stems from a series of regional and state-level discussions with FTZ grantees that began in April 2007, would be greater flexibility and predictability for a participating grantee to use administrative ``minor boundary modifications'' (MBMs) to modify FTZ sites. The greater flexibility would be made possible by participating grantees' increased focus on the FTZ sites needed for current or near-term zone activity, with a resulting improvement in the efficiency of FTZ oversight by government agencies. The availability of this alternative framework would affect only participating FTZ grantees and would occur within the existing statutory and regulatory context (including the role of the local CBP port director relative to any application for Board action or MBM request).