The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) sprang a surprise last month by releasing a report on the management of defence offsets – a policy instrument that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) itself appears poised to discontinue.The timing is curious.No new offset contract has been signed in the past five years and the draft Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP) 2026, released for public comment in February, contains no offset guidelines, signalling that the policy may be on its way out. Yet the PAC has chosen this moment to undertake an extensive review of a regime introduced in 2005 and now seemingly nearing the end of its life, if not already deceased.The PAC report also raises a broader question: why devote so much parliamentary attention to a policy that the government itself appears to be quietly abandoning? The PAC’s inquiry is further complicated by the fact that defence offsets have long been examined by the Standing Committee on Defence (SCoD), another parliamentary oversight body, raising additional questions over the functional utility of such overlapping scrutiny.More significantly, the PAC report is strikingly retrospective.It relies heavily on a 2019 performance audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) and a 2018 study by the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, both critical of offsets. While the MoD has updated some of the data, the PAC report remains largely focused on historical shortcomings rather than the future of the offsets policy.This matters because the offset regime’s current status is fundamentally different from what it was when those studies were conducted.Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.Contrary to the impression created by some of the criticism of offsets, the policy’s performance has not been uniformly poor. Since the first such contract was signed in 2007, India has concluded 56 offset agreements carrying obligations worth $13.215 billion. Of these, 20 contracts have been concluded, another 10 have been completed and await final audit, while the remaining 26 run up to 2033, and are in the process of being completed.According to the PAC report, claims accounting for 93.06% of the offset obligations due by January 2026 have already been submitted by vendors. Of these claims, 78.4% have been audited and either accepted or rejected, suggesting administrative delays in processing claims, rather than widespread vendor non-compliance.The offset policy has also created a substantial industrial ecosystem. By December 2025, there were 350 Indian Offset Partners (IOPs), including 146 micro, small and medium enterprises, over 95% of which were from the private sector. By any consideration, these are hardly negligible outcomes for a policy that has faced criticism almost from inception.The PAC nevertheless focuses on delays in contract execution and the failure of offsets to generate significant technology transfer and foreign direct investment. While these concerns are legitimate, they overlook a fundamental reality: offsets were never likely to become a reliable mechanism for acquiring cutting-edge defence technologies.Foreign original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have always been reluctant to part with their most sensitive intellectual property merely to satisfy offset obligations, for reasons that are not difficult to understand.Furthermore, the report’s recommendation that the policy be reoriented towards technology transfer appears disconnected from the direction of India’s current procurement strategy, which has already moved away from offsets.Procurement categories increasingly prioritise atmanirbharta, or indigenisation, favouring domestic prime contractors, for whom offsets are irrelevant. At the same time, many major acquisitions are now undertaken through intergovernmental agreements like many with the US for heavy lift and attack helicopters, maritime reconnaissance and transport aircraft and light weight howitzers, all of which remain exempt from offset obligations altogether.Seen in this context, the central question is no longer whether offsets performed perfectly: it is primarily why the MoD and the government appear to have concluded that the policy has outlived its usefulness.On that question, the PAC report offers surprisingly little insight. Moreover, such questions might have been pertinent a few years ago, but presently when no new offset contracts are being signed and the policy itself appears headed for extinction, asking what steps are being taken to improve the current regime would be more important than a retrospective examination of past policies.Its detailed examination of historical shortcomings may help document the past. But if offsets are indeed disappearing from India’s defence procurement framework, Parliament’s more pressing task is to understand why that decision has been taken and what, if anything, will replace them.That is the debate that now matters.Amit Cowshish is a former financial advisor (acquisitions), Ministry of Defence.This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.