(For more on the issue, go to Jeff DeBoer's column in ViewPoints.)

WASHINGTON, DC-The "make available" provision of the Terrorism Insurance Risk Act, scheduled to expire this summer on Sept. 1, has gotten a reprieve. The US Department of the Treasury revealed on Friday its decision to extend this portion of TRIA that mandates insurance companies make terrorism insurance available on the same terms as property and casualty insurance. Now the provision will remain in place through Dec. 31, 2005, the same date that TRIA, as a whole, is scheduled to expire.

"The terrorism risk insurance program has been an important confidence builder as this country recovered from the attacks of Sept. 11 and the recession," Treasury Secretary John Snow says in a statement on the extension. "By extending the make available provision, we ensure that our overall evaluation of the program's success is based on information and assumptions that are consistent and that there's no changing of the rules in the middle of the game."

Representatives of industries ranging from banking to building have been campaigning for the extension of the "make available" provision for months, and the Coalition to Insure Against Terrorism has been courting the Treasury on behalf of many of the sectors that are affected by terrorism insurance. As a result, Friday's coup had a far-reaching and resounding effect.