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Allowability of Costs/Cost Considerations for Foreign Grantees

This section of the NIH Policy Statement provides a list of allowable costs for foreign grants, but is not intended to be all-inclusive.

The allowable costs section for NIH grants in general (including domestic and foreign).

Remember that foreign grants may not charge the following costs:

Alteration and Renovation Costs: Generally unallowable.

Customs and Import Duty Costs: Generally unallowable. This includes consular fees, customs surtax, value-added taxes, and other related charges.

Facility and Administrative (F&A) Costs: Generally, full F&A costs will not be allowed. However, NIH generally provides limited F&A costs (as of 2007, this was 8 percent of total direct costs less equipment) to foreign institutions and international organizations to support the costs of compliance with NIH requirements including, but not limited to, protection of human subjects, animal welfare, and research misconduct.

Other cost considerations for foreign grants:

U.S. Dollars: The application budget, requests for funds, and financial reports must be stated in U.S. dollars. Once an award is made, NIH will not compensate foreign grantees for currency exchange fluctuations through the issuance of supplemental awards.

Cost Reporting: Foreign grantees must submit annual Financial Status Reports (FSR) in U.S. dollars, whether or not they are under Streamlined Non-competing Award Process (SNAP). This is due to the fact that foreign grantees are not paid through Payment Management System (PMS) and, therefore, do not submit the SF 272 (which NIH uses in lieu of the annual FSR for domestic awards under SNAP). The currency rate in effect at the time the FSR is prepared should be used in preparing the report.

Audit: Foreign grantees are subject to the same audit requirements as for-profit organizations (specified in 45 CFR 74.26(d) and in "Grants to For-Profit Organizations" in the NIH Grants Policy Statement).