India has re-released its Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP) 2020. Now renamed the Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP) 2020, the draft document is 57 pages shorter than the 746-page draft published in March. The usual complexities remain. The Dept of Defence Production has also released a draft version of its new Defence Production and Export Promotion Policy, adding to the confusion over offset multipliers.
Amit Cowshish, a consultant and former Indian Financial Advisor (Acquisition) at the MoD, has called for India to discontinue its offset policy. Changes proposed in the draft Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP) 2020 have significantly reduced the number of procurements to which offsets will apply, he notes.
The Spanish government has committed to buying additional military aircraft from Airbus and to lend the company political support in exchange for industrial benefits. Airbus, which is 4 percent owned by the Spanish government, had said it will lay off about 900 workers in Spain as part of 15,000 job cuts worldwide, prompting large protests outside its factories.
Israel’s Industrial Cooperation Authority (ICA), together with the Ministry of Economy, to which it reports, has found support for the use of offsets during a meeting of the Knesset’s Economics Committee. The Knesset meeting follows a long-running dispute between the MoE and the Ministry of Finance over the use of offsets, with the former supporting its use, and the latter opposing it.
The House of Representatives Commission overseeing Indonesia’s defence, foreign affairs, and information agencies has warned that a plan to purchase second-hand Eurofighter Typhoon jets from Austria could violate the law requiring foreign acquisitions to include countertrade, local content, and offset provisions equivalent to 85 percent of the acquisition price.