The India Regional Offset Conference held in New Delhi in February was pure political theatre: entertaining, with high audience participation, and the ultimate demonstration of public accountability. DPP 2008 was neatly dissected…
Discussing credit banking, Shashi Kant Sharma, Director General for Acquisition at the MoD, admitted that “certain issues” have not been fully answered but believes that vendors have misunderstood the new facility.
If indirects represented one point of dissatisfaction for OEMs, technology transfer was a challenge for India, especially when it came to deciding their value.
“DOFA to many of us is a rather mysterious organisation,” began David Wolf innocently. “Can you take us through the steps of obtaining pre-approval for an offset project? Secondly, how will DOFA monitor specific offset programmes and evaluate those programmes and issue credits to those obligors?”
The contentious report on Switzerland's industrial participation and offset process prepared by the Swiss Audit Authority following its probe of Armasuisse, leaked last July, has so far failed to provoke the company into making the policy changes demanded of it by the government.