New DPP addresses business hurdles intelligently; Like focus on transparency: Airbus India

QUEPEM (GOA): Optimistic about the new Defence Procurement Policy (DPP), Pierre de Bausset, the India head of Airbus says, "The new DPP addresses concerns of the both Indian defence players and us, and it does it intelligently."



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"What we like in it is insistence on transparency and speed of acquisitions, and that is going to engage the foreign players much better, because they will be dealing with less uncertainty in the system and they will understand where they are going and what is at play to win a business or lose it," he told Economictimes.com at the Defence Expo 2016.

Talking in detail about how the new DPP is beneficial, Bausset said, "The new DPP addresses concerns because, first, it has a preamble to it, and I see all the value of that preamble, because what it does is, it sets the vision, the spirit and the principles before it goes into the details of the rules and that is very good because sometimes the rules when they are too precise work against the system. Then you can go back to the preamble and to the big idea."

Bausset also likes the focus on MSMEs that the new DPP has. "I like the focus on the MSMEs, because I actually believe that for all the talk of strategic partners that we have been hearing...as you build the industry, you need MSMEs, which are like building bricks. This is where the innovation, energy and ambition is. One day the strategic partner may be these guys (MSMEs), for the moment this is a role that we can play."

Talking about the company's plans in India, especially Mahindra and Tata, he said, "What we have with Mahindra is an MoU for manufacturing military choppers. We have been discussing a lot of things with them. We are working with Tatas on the C295W project. It's not a JV, it's a contractual relationship, they will be subcontracting from us. The progress is good. The aircraft is undergoing technical evaluation; we will have flight tests very quickly now. We think that this is going in the right direction. I was happy to see that Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, in a session at the Defence Expo, mentioned the C295W a number of times. I believe the C295W is a very credible offer, a low-hanging fruit in terms of quick Make in India applications."

Asked about how Airbus plans to contribute to the Skill India programme, given the employment potential that its deals generate, Bausset said, "We buy a lot from Indian companies. In doing so, we have done a lot to bring them up to the standards that we need for them to be able to sell to us, because there are very exacting standards in our industry. Part of what we have been doing is skilling specifically."

"When we will be investing in final assembly lines over here, we will have to devote specific parts of our investment to skilling technicians to develop these parts. Tata is doing this remarkably in Hyderabad. That's a model that we will be looking at," he added.