The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has begun setting up a new, crucially important department that will monitor and audit some Rs 8,300 crore worth of offsets per year that must be discharged by foreign vendors who sell arms to India. On August 1, the MoD had announced new offset guidelines that mandated such a body.
Senior MoD officials, speaking anonymously, have briefed Business Standard on the Defence Offset Monitoring Wing (DOMW), the clunky nomenclature given to the new department. The MoD has been sanctioned an additional secretary just to head the DOMW. One of the DOMW chief’s first actions will be to hire a private agency for physically auditing the implementation of offsets by foreign arms vendors.
“Tenders will be going out soon to a range of consultants. We need an agency that can physically verify the correctness of the compliance reports that the vendors will be submitting to us every six months. The MoD does not have the resources to do these checks,” explains a senior MoD official.
Senior MoD officials, speaking anonymously, have briefed Business Standard on the Defence Offset Monitoring Wing (DOMW), the clunky nomenclature given to the new department. The MoD has been sanctioned an additional secretary just to head the DOMW. One of the DOMW chief’s first actions will be to hire a private agency for physically auditing the implementation of offsets by foreign arms vendors.
“Tenders will be going out soon to a range of consultants. We need an agency that can physically verify the correctness of the compliance reports that the vendors will be submitting to us every six months. The MoD does not have the resources to do these checks,” explains a senior MoD official.
