Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and Thales entered into a joint venture

Corporate/Bussiness Current Affairs 2012. Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), the defense public sector unit of India and French security solutions company. Thales announced a joint venture on 5 September 2012 to manufacture radars for civilian and defence purposes. The operations related to the processing of the manufacturing process will begin after one and a half year. Following the regulations in India for a foreign company holding shares in the Indian Defense sector, Thales will be able to hold a 26 percent of the equity in total, whereas rest of the 74 percent will remain with BEL. This joint venture will also provide BEL a chance to be a part of Thales Global Supply Chain.

Although a MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) was signed by both the groups on 17 November 2009 and has been in effect since then, the directors of both the companies were waiting for government’s approval.

With this venture, it’s expected that the expertise carried on by Thales in system engineering, testing and integration as well as transfer of the technology will be transferred to India. Thales is a capable player in force protection, air defence solutions, rocket system and missile system as well as in the mobile ground C4I system. One of the major contracts won by the company in the recent past is the contract to upgradation of 49 Mirage 2000s of Indian Air Force into full Mirage 2000v5 Mk 2 standards.