Main headlines from this issue

Armscor’s bunker mentality – 100 percent penalty has industry in a spin

Executives at Armscor have been gagged all the way to the top and no-one is permitted to speak about the Defence Industrial Participation (DIP) policy. Anyone who has tried seeking clarification on policy issues faces a brick wall. The silence has spawned a waterfall of rumours.

Ukraine’s offset policy introduces a novel twist on quotas

Details of Ukraine’s offset policy have recently become clearer — and include a strange view of quotas. They vary according to the purchasing sector and are set as a percentage of the costs of acquisition under the main contract.

Denmark: “Bring us jobs or we don’t buy from you”

Candidates bidding into the Danish Fighter Replacement Programme will have to bring Danish jobs to the negotiating table, the Defence Ministry said. \All four candidates will be informed of the same: If there won’t be jobs coming to Denmark then we won’t be buying planes from them.\"

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India: “Muddled thinking on FDI – and we have trashed the concept of multipliers”

India’s MoD often claims that foreign investors are guided purely by economic considerations and that they are neither influenced by the FDI limit nor by other provisions. Major General Mrinal Suman believes the ministry’s position reflects \ignorance of the dynamics of FDI flow.\"

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Thailand revisits countertrade

Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has raised with China the prospect of a bilateral countertrade deal with Thailand supplying agricultural goods against unspecified Chinese technologies.