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Sweden's Saab will tie up with India's Adani Group to bid for a contract to make fighter aircraft in India, an aerospace consultant aware of the proposed partnership told Reuters on Thursday.
The partnership will compete with US defence giant Lockheed Martin in a two horse-race to equip the Indian military with single-engine jets to be produced locally under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "Make-in-India" initiative.
The partnership will likely be announced on Friday, Shrivastava said.
Saab declined to comment. Saab President and Chief Executive Hakan Buskhe will host a media event in New Delhi on Friday, Saab said in a press invitation issued on Wednesday. It did not give details.
Shares in Adani Enterprises Ltd, a group company, rose on Thursday after the news of the planned Saab tie-up and were trading about 2.7 percent higher. Saab shares were up by 1.8 percent.
Under India's new defence partnership policy, a foreign aircraft maker will collaborate with an Indian firm to develop a world-class indigenous aeronautical base that India has struggled to build for decades.
Lockheed has already picked India's Tata Advanced Systems as its local partner to produce its F-16 fighter planes that will compete with Saab's Gripen aircraft.
India's air force needs hundreds of aircraft to replace its Soviet-era fleet, but Modi wants the planes built in India to help boost the domestic industrial base and cut imports.
(Additional reporting by Aditi Shah and Nidhi Verma; Editing by Neil Fullick and Muralikumar Anantharaman)
Published in an arrangement with IANS.
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