India has released a long-awaited draft of its new Defence Production Policy (DPP). Weighing in at over 740 pages, the document has revised the country’s offset guidelines, making significant changes to the Make in India defence procurement categories, indigenous content levels, and multipliers. Thresholds, quotas, penalties, performance periods, and a high level of general confusion remain unchanged. The unending categories and sub-categories read like a struggle between Holmes and Moriarty.
A report from India’s Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence predicts that sellers will have discharged offsets worth $11.8bn by 2024. India signed 54 offset contracts between the program’s inception in 2005 and October 31, 2019.
A new report by Insight Economics has criticised Naval Group’s level of local content on Australia’s Attack-Class Submarines contract. Insight Economics, commissioned by the lobby group “Submarines for Australia,” has called for Canadian-style Industrial and Technological Benefits obligations on future procurements.
The South African Department of Trade and Industry has warned that it will intensify auditing of local content claims. The warning comes amidst alerts of a number of problems with the administration of the policy. Some state bodies have advertised for tenders without local content requirements and have failed to properly evaluate bids and tenders in line with requirements.
The long-running conflict between Israeli ministries over the use of offsets in public transport tenders has finally drawn to a close. The court ruled that the state is not obliged to impose reciprocal procurement demands on public transport tenders.