The Rafale is good business for Reliance ADA.
Anil Dhirubhai Ambani, Reliance ADA's big boss, is rubbing his hands with glee.
Monday October 3rd, his Reliance Infrastructure division, listed on the Bombay
stock exchange, announced the creation of a joint venture with Dassault Aviation
inder the name Dassault Reliance Aerospace ( DRA ). Its shares' worth jumped 8%.
The new company intends to be a "key player" of upcoming investments by the
French plane maker in India. In exchange for the biggest order ever registered by
the Rafale on the export market -36 firm order-, Dassault in fact agreed to return
half of the contract value ( 590 B rupees or almost 8B € ) locally.
In transfers of technology for a part, under guise of contribution to the Defense Re-
search and Development Organisation of the Indian defence ministry, which is no-
tably working on a relaunch of its Kaveri program, a turbojet engine originally inten-
ded for the Tejas fighter. Further, the deal includes all sorts of industrial returns known
as offsets. DRA is thus hoping to garner in 7 years a turnover of 218 billion rupees
( 2,93 billion Euros ). That volume of activity could provide work for about 200 sub-
contractors, generating 1,500 direct jobs and 9,000 ones in indirect employment.
Elements assembled in Nagpur
Finding out about these previsions, the public enterprise Hindustan Aeronautics Limited
( HAL ) has cause for frowning as it initially expected to get a cut. In a first draft by the
previous government, under the Congress Party, the Rafale deal was for 126 machines,
108 of which assembled on Indian soil in the HAL workshops of Bangalore in Karnataka.
Begun in 2012, that projected deal fell apart 3 years later.
It is then in Nagpur that some parts for the Rafale will be born. A place laden with sym-
bolism : third city in the state of Maharashtra the capital of which is Bombay, this 2,4 m
people town center is smack in the middle of the sub-continent and made itself famous
with its orange trees and coal mines. But it is especially the birthplace of the present head
of the local government and the home of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh ( national vo-
lunteers corps ), the paramilitary hindi movement out of which the Bharatiya Janata Party
( BJP / Indian People Party ), Prime Minister Narendra Modi's political group.
Reliance ADA has already taken preparatory steps : the group acquired a 117 hectares
piece of land nearby the multi-modal airport platform of Nagpur on which it plans to build
a 400 000 square meters factory. Although the production of the 36 Rafales is to take place
at Mérignac, in Gironde, the Indian Air Force settling for an off-the-shelf deal, the DRA J-V.
thinks it can build pieces of the mainframe, many engine elements and some of the embar-
ked electronics in Nagpur. It has launch recruitment for a CEO with 7 candidates already
vying for it. According to a source close to the action mentioned in the economics daily Mint,
" ... activity should start a year from now" .
Credibility at play
In its association with Dassault Aviation, Reliance ADA is putting its trustworthiness at risk.
The group was formed in 2005 after a split of the Ambani brothers regarding inheritance.
Mukesh, the eldest, is India's richest man with a net worth estimated by Forbes magazine
at 20,9 billion dollars ( 18,7 B € ). He is head of Reliance Industries Limited, a conglomerate
that is striking gold in the petrochemical industry but also in distribution and, since September,
in telecommunications as Jio. Steering the Reliance ADA ship is the youngest brother Anil
also present in telecoms and energy as well as media, public works and construction. He is
given for a thousand billion rupees in turnover (13,4 billion € ) with a 100 000 strong workforce.
It was only in January 2015 that Reliance ADA invested in defense business by buying Pipavav
Defence and Offshore Engineering, a company active in aeronautics, submarines, warships &
oil drilling platforms. Since rechristened Reliance Defence and Engineering, it is also listed in
Bombay's S.E.
Tay transl.
http://www.lemonde.fr/economie/arti...-groupe-indien-reliance-ada_5008423_3234.html
As promised and good day all, Tay.
