French team may visit India in May to finalise Rafale jet deal

A French team is likely to fly down to New Delhi in May to make final arrangements for a deal under which India will be buying 36 Rafale fighter jets built by Dassault Aviation, Press Trust of India reported.

According to an earlier report by NDTV, India and France agreed to make the purchase for $8.8 billion (approximately Rs. 59, 000 crore) after months of negotiations. The two countries are expected to sign the final agreement by the next month and the first batch of the fighter aircraft was expected to be delivered to India in at least 18 months.

However, PTI quoted its sources as saying: "The effort is to bring down the price to less than Euros 8 billion (Rs 59,000 crore)." Both the sides are expected to finalise the deal by May-end, the sources added.

The "agreed" deal is inclusive of a 50 percent offsets clause, according to which Dassault Aviation will reinvest in India to create businesses amounting to at least 3 billion Euros for smaller Indian companies and jobs.

The clause would allow companies like Safran and Thales to provide state-of-art technologies in stealth, radar, thrust vectoring for missiles and materials for electronics and micro-electronics to Dassault.