Defexpo 2010 on course, stall bookings open

Defexpo 2010, one of the premier land and naval systems show in Asia will be held as per its original schedule from February 15-18, 2010,New Delhi,India. Sources in India’s Defence Exhibition Organization (DEO) told defenseworld.net that space bookings had been thrown open and exhibitors needed to contact DEO to reserve space of their choice. This must come as a huge sigh of relief to international exhibitors who had booked hotels and made other arrangements such selecting their products to display and starting customs and other formalities to import them into India and then re-export them back to their home countries. While DEO has started space bookings, it is yet to select an event manager. The two contending parties being CII, India’s leading industry association, which has organized the event in the past and FICCI, another trade body. Sources said if a decision on selecting the event manager was not taken soon, then DEO would go ahead with organizing the event on its own. The pricing of the stall is such as to encourage Indian small scale enterprises (SSE) to participate. Given the importance of offsets, the government is trying to project Indian companies, in particular the SSEs, as potential partners in offsets contracts. India has a defence procurement budget exceeding US$20 billion over the next five years with most of the equipment likely to be imported. This makes India one of the world’s most attractive markets for defence procurement.