DefExpo is finally announced!

Neelam Mathews

Dec 23, 2011

After keeping its clients waiting and sweating, the 7th DefExpo will be held in New Delhi from March 29-April 1, 2012.

AerospaceDiary learns exhibitors are miffed with the delay in announcement of dates. “Planning has gone for a toss and besides, in the past years, we completed the event in India and moved on to the Singapore Air Show as this helped in reducing costs. This year, our senior people will not attend,” says an OEM.

The biennial International Defense Exhibition on Land and Naval Systems is organized by the Department of Defense Production on behalf of the Ministry of Defense. Over the years, there have been constant complaints on the lack of infrastructure and facilities.This is hurting the image of the country given that it always projects itself alongside China, says an official.

India’s large procurement plans attracts exhibitors to the show. An Indoor Shell Scheme in DefExpo is available to foreign exhibitors at $ 709 per square metre in comparison to Euro 330 psqm (or $431) for Indoor Raw Space that was available at a similar trade show, the 11^th Auto Expo, slated to be held at the same venue, Pragati Maidan, from Jan.7-11, 2012, says a statement.

Justifying the cost, the statement adds: “But the Auto Expo is staged on a much larger canvas, with the last Auto Expo in 2010 spread over more than four times the 30,100 sqm exhibition area that was occupied during the last Def Expo held a month later.”

“From a foreign vendor’s point of view a per square meter of exhibition space at the DefExpo is still more than double the rate, $350, at which the same space would have been available to him during the India International Trade Fair, IITF-2011. However, the same unit space area at Def Expo, the exclusive Land and Naval Systems’ Defense Industry Exposition instituted in the year 1999, is available to the Indian exhibitors at a slightly lower rate, Rs.13,509.60 psqm, than Rs.14,000.00, that would have cost him at the 31^st IITF-2011, an annual fair held since 1980. But the last Def Expo attracted 1.26 lakh visitors in all during the four days - Feb.15-18, 2010, in comparison to the IITF, spread over a fortnight, which records close to one lakh footfalls per day and even more on the weekends/holidays,” says the statement.