Russia’s Sukhoi to bid for supplying jet fighters to Indonesia

LANGKAWI, Malaysia, March 17. /TASS/. Russia’s aircraft manufacturer Sukhoi has presented its bid for supplying fighter jets to Malaysia. "The bidding contest is in progress. The related procedures are underway. We have presented our proposal to the tender commission," Sukhoi’s deputy CEO for marketing, Aleksandr Klementiev, told TASS at the international exhibition LIMA-2015 in Malaysia. He remarked that Indonesia was going to purchase fifteen planes or so. Klementiev said that Sukhoi was proactively marketing its fighter jets in Southeast Asia and the Asia-Pacific Region. "The main countries of the Asia-Pacific Region using Sukhoi aircraft are India, China, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia. We are in no mood of losing momentum there, in particular, in view of the problems that have emerged for us in North Africa and the Middle East, where it is hard to push ahead with the systematic work we had been carrying out before. The situation in Latin America is no easy. For this reason Southeast Asia looks very attractive to us, as the amount of trade grows." Klementiev said the Sukhoi company was looking forward to decisions by the leadership of Malaysia and other countries in the region regarding the replacement of the aging fleet of their aircraft. "Decisions will have to be made either to upgrade the existing planes or purchase new ones. We shall have to just wait for these countries to make up their mind, to get ready properly and to approach them with our proposals at the right moment. Surely competition is getting stronger in these markets. The line of products that it is present here (the LIMA-2015 exhibition) makes us certain that the struggle is going on beyond the tender’s framework," Klementiev said adding that Rafale, from France’s Dassault Aviation, was one of the competitors. Read more