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Tokyo, 9th Sept 2022: Defence Minister Rajnath Singh alongwith External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has visited Japan for the Bilateral 2+2 meetings. During the course of discussions, both the ministers had wide spectrum of bilateral and regional issues of mutual interest with Japan. Being the two thriving democracies in Asia, both India & Japan are pursuing a Special Strategic and Global Partnership. This year is significant for both India and Japan, as both the nation are celebrating 70 years of establishment of diplomatic relations. India & Japan discussed on the progress in the military to military cooperation and exchanges between the two sides. Talks were also made to further increase the scope and complexities of bilateral exercises. Both the nation established staff talks and High-level dialogue between all the three Services and the Coast Guard and they agreed on Staff Talks between the Joint Staff of the Japanese Self Defense Forces and the Integrated Defence Staff of India. The participation of Japan for the first time in the multilateral exercise MILAN and operationalization of the Reciprocal Provision of Supply and Services Agreement in March this year are milestones in the progress of defence cooperation between the two forces.. The Defiance Minster said,“ Enhancing the Defence Equipment and Technological Cooperation between India and Japan is one of our key priority areas. In our meeting today, I had the opportunity to propose engagements in emerging and critical technological domains. I have also invited the Japanese defence companies to look at opportunities in investing in the Indian Defence Corridors.” The Minster further said,“ We held extensive discussions on ways to enhance maritime cooperation including Maritime Domain Awareness. There is consensus on both sides that a strong India-Japan relationship is very important for a free, open, rule-based and inclusive Indo-Pacific based upon sovereignty and territorial integrity of nations. India’s Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative (IPOI) shares many commonalities with Japan’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP). India has also developed maritime cooperation with regional partners in consonance with our inclusive vision of Security and Growth for All in the Region (SAGAR).” India’s relationship with ASEAN has emerged as a key corner stone of the foreign policy. Through ADMM Plus, both India and Japan are working together with ASEAN and other Plus countries for strengthening cooperation across domains including maritime security, HADR, Peace Keeping Operations etc.

29th August 2022; Bangkok: The Defence Minister of Thailand, Gen Prayut, officially launched the Defence & Security 2022 exhibition, being held in the Challenger Hall at the Impact Exhibition and Convention Centre. The exhibition, which runs until Sept 1, has brought together advanced weapons and state-of-the-art defence technology from more than 15 countries including the United States, France, Israel, Germany,South Korea, China and the Czech Republic. During his opening remarks, Gen Prayut thanked foreign dignitaries, military leaders and entrepreneurs in the defence industry for putting together one of the Asean’s key events. The expo had maximum visitors at the 155mm autonomous truck-mounted gun and a US Army XM5 assault rifle. The 2022 show has over 500 world-leading military and internal security manufacturers from 50 countries including 30 top national pavilions.

Delhi; 27th August 2022: In the recent visit of Tanzanian Minister of Defence and National Service Dr Stergomena Lawrence Tax to India, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh held bilateral talks with his counterpart on various key issues. The officials discussed various issues concerning bilateral, regional and defence industrial cooperation during the meeting. The two Ministers reviewed the existing military-to-military activities and discussed ways to enhance cooperation in all domains with a focus on defence industry cooperation. The defence ministers of both the nation agreed to the formation of a Task Force to prepare a Five Year Future Road map for enhancing defence cooperation between both the countries and to hold the next Joint Defence Cooperation meeting in Tanzania at an early date. The Raksha Mantri also invited his Tanzanian counterpart to the India-Africa Defence Dialogue and DefExpo which is scheduled to be held in Gandhinagar, Gujarat between 18-22 October, 2022. The Tanzanian Minister of Defence and National Service visited the National War Memorial and paid homage to the fallen heroes by laying wreath at the monument. Dr Tax would be visiting Wargaming Development Centre and Information Fusion Centre – Indian Ocean Region before departing for Hyderabad for interaction with the Indian Defence Industries.

AW Feature * The potential of GIFT City in transforming the aviation leasing business in India. * What are the scope and challenges faced the in aviation leasing business In India. * Scope of leasing bigger aircrafts through GIFT City ? By Dr. Arun Lohiya The aviation industry, after undergoing the hiatus due to Covid-19, has started displaying signs of growth and vast potential. By 2026, the Indian leasing market is expected to increase 4.8 times of its value in 2018, making India the third largest aviation market in the world. Moreover, around 80 per cent of the total commercial aircrafts are leased in India due to various reasons like price sensitivity of infrastructure and consumers, financial fragility and operational incentives Another reason for airlines looking for lessors abroad is scarcity of proper leasing companies in India. Finding lessors locally will help in ascertaining favourable terms and conditions, thus helping the lessees. It will also give a major boost to the economy, leading to increased GDP and better retention of financial business and services. The Ministry of Civil Aviation, Government of India made ‘Project Rupee Raftar’— a working group for development of avenues for aircraft financing and leasing activities. The aim behind the constitution of this committee was to develop a strong and indigenous leasing and financing structure. The group had aviation experts, lawyers and financial institutions to ponder on policy and implementation issues. On 20 December 2019, the International Financial Services Centre Authority Act (IFSCA) was enacted by the Parliament to establish an IFSC Authority. As a result, Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City) came into existence. Then the Central Government categorised—aircraft leases (including operating and financial leases); any hybrid of operating and financial leases of aircraft or helicopters; and engines of aircraft or helicopters—as financial products under the IFSCA Act 2014. This opened prospects for formation of an aircraft leasing market in India, particularly in the GIFT City. Leasing in GIFT City includes an operating lease, sale leaseback, novation, purchase, transfer, assignment and any other related activity. “Touted as the country’s first operational green field smart city laced with best-in-class infrastructure to strengthen business and commerce, GIFT city is located in 105 hectares of special economic zone. An aircraft leasing company can set up themselves as an LLP, or a trust with a minimum capital of US$200,000 (or equivalent) and can deal in freely convertible currency and maintain a Rupee account to defray administrative expenses.” GIFT City also offers an elaborate range of tax incentives. In the 2021-22 Union budget, the government introduced various additional tax breaks like tax holiday for lessors and exemption from payment of withholding tax concessional corporate tax rates with the aim to encourage lessors to establish their units in IFSC. GIFT also provides a financially feasible environment with assemblage of financial agencies, including public and private sector banks, asset management companies and service providers. At present, India has 700 aircraft (commercial side) and India airlines have around 800 planes currently on order that are planned to be delivered in the next half a decade. However, despite this regulatory regime, there are numerous challenges and problems, aviation as an industry relies heavily on capital expenditure and funding from banks that are reluctant in financing aircraft because of the unclear regulatory regime. Furthermore, logistical issues like lack of airports poses a crucial challenge to aircraft lessors because newly leased aircraft are required to be stationed at a proper place. According to the current regime, an aircraft lessor at GIFT is excused from custom duty. However, uncertainty among custom officials is frequent resulting in procedural postponements. Even though the aircraft leasing and finance industry in India has growth prospects, it is imperative for the sector to identify and rectify the key bottlenecks. The country is required to build a conducive tax regime supported by authorities for private enterprise to grow and contest with the existing occupants. Moving on to some of the major bottlenecks to the airplane leasing industry—Competitive Tax Regime is a major hurdle in development of leasing businesses. The effective tax rates in countries like Singapore, Hong Kong, Ireland, etc. is between 10-17 per cent. In addition, firms in aircraft leasing businesses pay taxes at an even lower tax rate of 5-10 per cent in the above mentioned countries. The corporate tax rate in India, however, is 25 per cent for domestic businesses with turnover of up to Rs 250 crore and 30 per cent for businesses with higher turnover. This is much higher in comparison with countries with established leasing industries.Decreased and competitive tax rate for aircraft leasing firms is essential to build a viable leasing and financing market in the country. Secondly, withholding tax is a crucial decisive factor for the airline operators and also attracts most of the lessors’ attention. It is a general practice that lessors pass the withholding tax burden on to a lessee in the form of five years lease rentals. Since, withholding tax is levied on lease rental paid by the lessee or operator, a high withholding tax implies high cost of leasing to the airline operators. Based on the Airline Economics and AirFinance Journal conferences held in Dublin in May 2022, some of the most common trends are as following: 1.ESG: The upgradation of fleet and numerous green initiatives by major stakeholders have helped a great deal in reducing the sector’s carbon footprint. A common census, on making more efforts towards choosing eco-friendly ways, emerged from major players. Some of these solutions include increased use of SAF as supply increases and costs come down, and eventually use eVTOLs for lower capacity, short-haul transport. 2.Emergence of Alternate Capital Sources: For lessors, expanding funding channels remains to be a priority. Private equity’s existence is ever-growing and private equity firms have brought added competition in the debt markets. Especially while conventional financiers assumed a “wait and see” method, these substitute capital providers have shown an intention and capacity to step in and meet financing needs. 3.Potential Consolidation: A

Mumbai,7th August, 2022: Indians scouting for a holiday in Finland, can brace themselves as Finnair launched its maiden aircraft, AY125,to India at Mumbai Airport (CSMIA).The inaugural flight arrived in Mumbai on 07th August, 2022 at 0515hrsand flight AY126 departed from CSMIA on 07th August, 2022 at 0710 hrs. The maiden flight departed carrying full flight of passengers on board. With this new route, passengers travelling from CSMIA will have increased seamless access to Finland, United States, and major European cities. Headquartered in Helsinki, Finnair is a network airline, specializing in connecting passenger and cargo traffic between Asia, North America, and Europe. Finnair is a member of the one world alliance, and the airline intends to reduce its net emissions by 50% by the end of 2025 from the 2019 baseline and achieve carbon neutrality latest by the end of 2045. Speaking about Finnair starting operations from Mumbai, CSMIA spokesperson said “CSMIA is extremely delighted with the association with Finnair, one of the leading airlines catering to routes across Asia, U.S and Europe. With the promise of being a gateway to the Nordic country, this partnership further adds to the airport’s robust connectivity with the addition of a prominent hub like Helsinki toits route network. With an aim to provide passengers with unparalleled travel across geographies, the partnership is not just a step towards direct connectivity to Finland but is a testament to CSMIA’s constant effort to expand the portfolio of destinations around the world and vision to contribute to the global travel network.” Finnair’s General Manager India, Mr. Sakari Romu expressed that, “We are very excited to start our operations from Mumbai. Our three-weekly flights serve our customers not only in providing a connection to Finland but also to our network in the US and major European cities”. With an aim to maximise passenger delight, CSMIA continues to create distinctiveness through its experiential offering and easy access on the global network. CSMIA will continue to cater to passengers demands and add more prominent destinations, making CSMIA – a ‘Gateway to Goodness’.

Lucknow, 6th August 2022: AirAsia India, commenced operations with daily direct flights from Lucknow to Bangalore, Goa and New Delhi from 5th August 2022. The airlines will connect its other two hubs, Mumbai and Kolkata from 1st September 2022, with a total of 112 weekly direct flights connecting Lucknow to these cities. The occasion was marked by the presence of government officials including General (Dr.) VK Singh (Retd.) – Minister of State Civil Aviation, Rajiv Bansal – Secretary, Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA), Usha Padhee – Joint Secretary, MoCA,S.P. Goyal – Additional Chief Secretary to CM, Uttar Pradesh. As of now, AirAsia India flies over 50 direct and 100 connecting routes across India.

Delhi, 25 July 2022: Vistara, Indian full-service carrier will introduce e-tech logbook solution to go paperless in its operations. It has appointed ULTRAMAIN ELB for this service, which will fully replace aircraft paper technical log, cabin log, journey log, damage log, and fueling log providing a validated electronic Certificate of Release to Service (e-CRS) on flights operated by Vistara. Currently in the airborne proving stage, the ELB application will be used by Flight Crew, Cabin Crew, and Engineers on iOS devices to provide integrated workflows with Vistara’s maintenance and operational systems. The airline is seeking necessary approvals from relevant authorities before fully integrating this solution across its operations. Once implemented, ULTRAMAIN ELB will enable accurate, real-time global operational visibility of the Vistara fleet resulting in more efficient maintenance, higher dispatch reliability, and increased aircraft utilization. “Vistara is delighted to partner with Ultramain Systems, which will provide the first Electronic Logbook to seek operational approval to operate a fully electronic Technical and Cabin Logbook in India. Ultramain ELB will be integrated with various live processes like AMOS, ACARS, and ARMS for seamless operations. This application, with its completeness and ease of use, is one step towards building enterprise application integration while also focussing on sustainable operations.”, said Sisira Kanta Dash, Senior Vice President – Engineering & Maintenance, Vistara. “As Vistara marches on its Digital Transformational journey, the focus on digital data capture, integration and automation will continue. ULTRAMAIN ELB will help digitize our aircraft paper logs and improve operational effectiveness.” said Vinod Bhat, Chief Information Officer, Vistara. “We are pleased to welcome Vistara to the ULTRAMAIN ELB family. As well as our well proven defect management functions. Vistara will be using ELB’s refuel / defuel functions, which enable real time capture of refueling documentation using Ultramain’s e-Signature capabilities. This is another important step towards the automation of Line Maintenance Operations” said Mark McCausland – President and CEO of Ultramain Systems.