On February 28, 2024, GSA issued Supplement 4 to Acquisition Letter MV-22-04. The policy extends a moratorium on the enforcement of certain limitations contained in certain GSA economic price adjustment (EPA) contract clauses to December 31, 2024.
In the supplement, which was jointly signed by Senior Procurement Executive Jeff Koses and FAS Assistant Commissioner for Policy and Compliance Mark Lee, GSA also noted that this extension was issued to provide time for the publication of a final rule that will incorporate a new EPA clause for the Multiple Award Schedule program into the GSAR.
Background
The General Services Administration (GSA) conducts routine reviews of its acquisition regulations and acquisition policies and procedures. The review indicated a need to standardize and simplify the Schedule clause for economic price adjustments.
The use of EPA provides for upward and downward revision of GSA Schedule contract pricing upon the occurrence of specified conditions over the anticipated 20 year contract period of performance. The Schedule program has a long history of providing the ability for Schedule contractors to submit EPA requests ( e.g., see 47 FR 50242 dated November 5, 1982).
Currently, Schedule contracts contain at least one of the following EPA clauses ( i.e., a Schedule contract may include more than one EPA clause based on their offering and participation in Transactional Data Reporting (TDR)): (1) Alternate I of GSAR clause 552.216–70, Economic Price Adjustment-FSS Multiple Award Schedule Contracts; (2) an authorized deviation of GSAR clause 552.216–70; (3) clause I–FSS–969, Economic Price Adjustment-FSS Multiple Award Schedule; or (4) an Alternate to clause I–FSS–969. The primary focus of these EPA clauses is the establishment of the procedures, including, but not limited to specific procedural limits ( e.g., timing and frequency) around the submission of EPA price increase requests. In terms of price decrease requests, all four clauses require such requests to be handled in accordance with GSAR clause 552.238–81, Price Reductions. Altogether, for the most part these four Schedule EPA clauses are very similar, with only minor differences, most of which are related to the EPA mechanism(s) proposed by the contractor ( e.g., annual fixed increases or increases based on their published or publicly available commercial price list) and the applicability of TDR.
GSA is seeking to standardize and simplify the Schedule clauses for EPA. The revisions will result in the consolidation of the four existing Schedule EPA clauses into a single Schedule EPA clause. The revisions will also remove several procedural limits contained in these clauses to better align with commercial standards and practices. GSA anticipates these changes will increase the number and extent of offerings available through the Schedule program, improve customer satisfaction by ensuring needed products, services, and solutions are initially offered and are not removed from the Schedule program, and reduce administrative costs on Schedule contractors, particularly small businesses and new entrants.