AMCHAM’s Defense Committee met with Mr. Rajib Kumar Sen, Economic Advisor and In-Charge, DOMW, on 26th July 2018, for further discussions on AMCHAM’s recommendations submitted on the request for comments on the draft modifications to Defence Offset Guidelines on 15th May 2018.

Mr. Sen clarified that the thrust of the new guidelines would be on investments as proposed in the draft circulated earlier with focus on special projects, joint ventures as well as funds. While updating the group on the key aspects of the new policy being structured, he assured that the suggestions sent in by AMCHAM were also considered while formulating the new policy. He also offered AMCHAM to come back with more observations and comments once the policy is rolled out preferably by next month. He agreed that there were functionality issues in the electronic submissions and these were being worked upon.

AMCHAM members of the Pharmaceuticals Committee met on 25th July, 2018 at the MSD office in Gurugram. The meeting was chaired by Mr. Sanjiv Navangul, Chairman – Pharmaceuticals Committee, AMCHAM and Managing Director, Janssen and Ms. Jyotsna Ghoshal, Co-Chair – Pharmaceuticals Committee, AMCHAM and Executive Director, Public Policy and Corporate Affairs, MSD. Other members present included Mr. Vivek Vasudev Kamath (via video conferencing), MD, MSD, Mr. Dibakar Bhattacharya, Director Corporate Affairs and PRA, Eli Lilly, Ms. Priya Hingorani, VP, Janssen, Mr. Sampathkumar, Director, Par Formulations, Mr. Balinder Singh, Dua Associates, Mr. Rajii Chibber, Associate Director, MSD, Ms. Nahid Zaman, Assistant Manager, MSD and Mr. Rajiv Arora, Senior Manager, MSD. Mr. Chad Norberg, Trade and Technology Unit Chief, U.S. Embassy, and Ms. Komal Kalha (via phone), USPTO from the U.S. Embassy joined the meeting. AMCHAM was represented by Mr. Gaurav Mendiratta.

Members deliberated and suggested their ideas on reviving the committee, which has struggled to get participation from members in the past, and agreed to leverage the AMCHAM platform which enjoys a strong connection with the U.S. Embassy. It was also suggested to strengthen the engagement with the U.S. Embassy and increase the frequency of interactions of members and the Embassy. The committee decided to work on increasing the membership of the committee by reaching out to U.S. based companies not yet members of AMCHAM.

Members also took the opportunity to highlight concerns regarding issues such as clinical trials and IPR related issues and it was decided that AMCHAM could focus on these two issues for advocacy with the government. It was also decided to create 3 sub-groups namely – clinical trials, IPR and pricing which will start to work on a position paper for each of the shortlisted areas. Mr. Chad Norberg shared an update on the ongoing bilateral talks between India and the U.S. as well as Embassy engagement on several issues with their Indian counterparts.

AMCHAM hosted Ms. Ellen Lord, Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition and Sustainment) and her delegation for a closed door interactive session with U.S. defense industry participation during her visit to India for the Defense Technology and Trade Initiative dialogue.

Ms. Lord and Mr. Matthew Warren, Acting Director, International Cooperation had candid conversations with the group on their engagement with her counterpart at the DTTI dialogue, about the restructuring of the DTTI Joint Working Groups into 5 groups down from previously 8 Joint Working Groups, namely Army Working Group, Navy Working Group, Airforce Working Group, Aircraft Working Group and Other Working Group, with specific leads to take up the discussions on behalf of the U.S. Government. DTTI Joint Working Groups were earlier based on projects but with the restructuring they have been streamlined into domain working groups.

They also updated the group on the objectives of the National Defense Strategy, which amongst other items, focuses on strengthening alliances and partnership and formulating business cases. It was mentioned that the Indian Embassy in Washington was considering placing an individual in Washington D.C. to only focus on DTTI and enable facilitation.

They also urged industry to provide inputs on significant business cases that could be adopted and significant road blocks that companies were facing to take matters up for discussions. They also requested for proposals on inputs on behalf of industry that the U.S. Government could provide to the Government of India for better Defence Technology and Trade Initiative dialogues in the future.