Agusta, Finmecannica bookings for Defexpo scrapped

NEW DELHI: After scrapping its Rs 3,600 crore chopper contract, the Defence Ministry today said it has ousted AgustaWestland and its parent group Finmecannica, facing bribery charges, from the biennial military exhibition Defexpo-14 starting Thursday by cancelling their bookings.

"Any firm which is facing any investigation or has been blacklisted, that company and its group firms will not be allowed to display their equipment at the Defexpo. AgustaWestland and Finmecannica had booked online for the show and their bookings were cancelled after we detected them," Secretary (Defence Production) G D Pati said here.

"The Defence Ministry holds the right to cancel the booking of any such firms," he told a press conference on the biennial military exhibition Defexpo to be held from February 6 to 9.

The Defence Ministry has cancelled the bookings of Finmecannica and its group companies including Oto Malera, WASS and AgustaWestland after the chopper manufacturing firm's contract was cancelled for supplying VVIP helicopters. The Ministry had cancelled the contract on January 1 after it found the firm allegedly guilty of violating the pre-contract integrity pact.

On the export potential of items developed indigenously by India, Pati said, " HAL has certain platforms such as ALH Dhruv chopper and Dornier aircraft, which can be used to penetrate the foreign markets including friendly foreign countries."

Additional Secretary (Defence Production) Ashok Gupta said the government was also working towards easing the norms for export licences for the public and private sector defence firms after holding consultations with all the stake-holders.
To a query on whether India would be willing to supply military hardware to countries in South America which are not in good books of the US, Defence Ministry officials said if there are certain US manufactured equipment on the systems, then America's permission would be required.

Asked if China was invited for the exhibition, Pati said the Chinese were not invited and the list of countries to be called for the show was decided in consultation with the Ministry of External Affairs.

On the exclusion of Services sector from the list of avenues where offsets could be done, he said a committee under an Additional Secretary-level officer has been formed to look into the issue and it will review the fields in which offsets could be performed.

Under the offsets clause, any firm bagging a deal worth over Rs 300 crore has to invest at least 30 per cent of the worth of the contract back into the Indian defence, civilian aerospace and the homeland security sectors.