International
Boeing talks unaffected by budget cuts: top official
Boeing talks unaffected by budget cuts: top official
Reuters/Bangalore
Boeing Company’s contract talks with India for military helicopters will be unaffected by planned budget cuts, an executive said yesterday, a day after the country’s defence minister said spending on arms would be tightened. |
India, the world’s biggest arms importer in recent years as it looks to upgrade its mostly Soviet-era military hardware, is cutting defence spending as part of a wider push by New Delhi to rein in its fiscal deficit.
“There is nothing that will lead me to believe there will be any delays,” said Dennis Swanson, vice president, international business development at Boeing’s Defence, Space and Security Division.
“India is one of our biggest growth markets. We are certainly aware of (the budget cuts). We are not changing anything that we are doing,” Swanson said on the sidelines of an air show in Bangalore.
Boeing is in exclusive talks to sell 22 of its Apache combat helicopters and 15 Chinook heavy lift helicopters to India. Swanson declined to comment on the deal value.
India agreed in 2011 to buy 10 C-17 military cargo planes from Boeing in a $4.1bn deal, but overlooked the US company in favour of France’s Dassault Aviation for a highly sought-after $12bn fighter jet contract.
“We do see additional opportunities for C-17s,” Swanson added, without providing details.
The US company’s civil aviation division is in talks to sell its 737-MAX aircraft to Indian carriers Jet Airways , SpiceJet and Air India, another executive said.
“737 has been the mainstay of domestic aviation in India ... All these airplanes will be replaced some day and the replacement for that is MAX,” Dinesh Keskar, Boeing’s vice-president for sales in Asia Pacific said. “We are in conversations with the airlines here.”
State-run passenger carrier Air India was the world’s fifth airline to take delivery of Boeing’s Dreamliner jet, and has ordered 27 in total.
The manufacturer will address compensation issues over the grounded Dreamliners after the troubled aircraft take to the skies again, Keskar said.
“The focus is to get the airplane back, then we will deal with that issue (of compensation) like we dealt with all these deliveries that are happening,” Keskar said.
“We will deal with that in closed rooms and with customers.”
Boeing’s 50 Dreamliners in service have been grounded since mid-January following two incidents involving battery problems. A US investigation into the issues is “weeks away” from completion, its head said this week.