Summary

During a study of transportation costs for Public Law 480 commodities, GAO identified an overpayment to Egypt by the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) in connection with a shipment of wheat to that country.

GAO found that the overpayment arose in a differential paid to Egypt because its wheat, as required by law, was shipped on an American-flag vessel instead of a less expensive foreign-flag vessel. GAO found that the apparent low bid for the shipment, which was used to compute the differential, was late and should have been rejected as nonresponsive. The differential should have been calculated based on the next low bid, which was also submitted by a foreign-flag vessel. GAO stated that the overpayment totalled about $144,000.