Grant Rogan, chairman of the offset service provider Blenheim Capital, and one of the offset community’s most controversial characters, has emerged in the Republic of the Congo. According to Mr Rogan, the prime minister and the president of the central African country have approved Blenheim’s proposals for establishing formal commercial offset guidelines. The guidelines will be modelled on the Omani policy...
Turkey’s Ministry of Science, Industry and Technology has amended the guidelines for implementing industrial cooperation partnerships through commercial procurement agencies. The ministry has raised non-performance penalties, and reconstructed the categories for discharging offsets, reducing them from four to three.
India’s minister of state for defence, Subhash Bhamre, has called the country’s ‘Make in India’ policy a failure. In a recently leaked presentation made to the Prime Minister’s Office in November last year, Mr Bhamre outlined a number of major areas in which the policy has failed to live up to expectations.
The U.S., EU, and Japan are jointly working to file a case against China through the World Trade Organisation. The case concerns forced technology transfers. The parties allege that China forces companies that want to enter the Chinese market to transfer key technologies as part of a wider strategy to acquire foreign expertise.
A European Union ban on importing palm oil into Europe threatens to block Malaysia’s purchase of defence equipment from France, the UK, Sweden, and Italy. France is opposing the ban, which could hinder both the Dassault and Eurofighter consortium’s offers of fighter jets. The UK is instead offering Malaysia export credit and industrial participation.