  We study the near-threshold pion-induced production of $\phi$ mesons off
nuclei in the kinematical conditions of the HADES experiment, recently
performed at GSI. The calculations have been performed within a collision model
based on the nuclear spectral function. The model accounts for both the primary
$\pi^-$ meson--proton ${\pi^-}p \to {\phi}n$ and the secondary pion--nucleon
${\pi}N \to {\phi}N$ $\phi$ production processes as well as the effects of the
nuclear $\phi$ and nucleon mean-field potentials. We find that the primary
reaction channel ${\pi^-}p \to {\phi}n$ dominates in the $\phi$ production off
$^{12}$C and $^{184}$W target nuclei in the HADES acceptance window at incident
pion momentum of 1.7 GeV/c. We calculate the momentum dependence of the
absolute and relative (transparency ratio) $\phi$ meson yields from the above
direct channel. The calculations have been performed for this initial pion
momentum allowing for different options for the ${\phi}N$ absorption cross
section $\sigma_{{\phi}N}$ and different scenarios for the in-medium mass
shifts of the $\phi$ meson and secondary neutron, produced together with $\phi$
in this channel. We demonstrate that the transparency ratio for the $\phi$
mesons has, contrary to the absolute cross sections, an insignificant
sensitivity to the $\phi$ meson and secondary neutron in-medium mass shifts at
$\phi$ momenta studied in the HADES experiment. On the other hand, we show that
there are measurable changes in the transparency ratio due to the ${\phi}N$
absorption cross section, which means that such relative observable can be
useful to help determine this cross section from the data taken in the HADES
experiment.
