BANGALORE, Feb 6: India expects to float a tender by mid-2007 for 126 combat planes for its air force, a defence ministry official said on Tuesday, a contract coveted by the giants of military aerospace worldwide.

The defence ministry and the air force are putting the finishing touches to the so-called request for proposals which will specify India's requirements and seek bids from potential suppliers, K.P. Singh, the secretary for defence production, told reporters in Bangalore on Tuesday.

“It's a large procurement so the people who are involved in the matter have to do a lot of work tying up various loose ends,” Singh said before the start of the five-day Bangalore air show on Wednesday.

“I'm sure that in the next six months something will happen.” The deal, which may be worth as much as nine billion dollars, has been in the pipeline since mid-2006 as India sought to replace the air force's ageing fleet of MiG-21s.

Warplanes in the running for the contract include the F-18 and F-16 aircraft made by Boeing and Lockheed Martin respectively, Russia's MiG-29 and the Gripen, made by Sweden's Saab.

The European defence and aircraft group EADS has also pitched its Eurofighter, and Dassault of France its fourth-generation Rafale.

Indian defence planners wanted the tender to be floated, after sufficient preparation, so that it would be “a job well done,” said Singh, the senior civil servant who oversees military production.

“You don't want to find that something has been missed out or something isn't there” when the tender is finally floated, he said.

The government required foreign defence suppliers to plough 30 per cent of the value of defence deals to Indian companies, a condition that took effect last year with a contract given to an Israeli manufacturer, Singh said.

Indian companies were “second to none” in software, he said, and the country had “great strength” in avionics, which make up about 50 per cent of the cost of a fighter plane.—AFP