India plans to create about 50 “champion” private sector companies in the defence sector that will drive the process of domestic manufacturing in the country and bring down dependence on imports in line with the ‘Make in India’ vision.

“We want to treat private sector companies in defence at par with public sector companies. We have to focus on building 50-60 private sector defence companies as champions,” Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP) Secretary Amitabh Kant said at a seminar on ‘Make in India’, organised by the University of Chicago, Delhi Centre on Tuesday.

Kant pointed out that a beginning had already been made in making the defence sector more competitive with the government liberalising the FDI policy to attract foreign investment and technology. “We can’t expect a change to happen immediately. Results will take at least 18 months. I see huge investments from top global companies coming in,” Kant said.

The Centre raised the FDI cap in the defence sector to 49 per cent from 26 per cent last year. It, however, did not give in to demands by major global defence companies of increasing it to 51 per cent, to give them a controlling stake.

Prime Minister Narender Modi recently reiterated that if foreign companies bring in state-of-art technology, then the FDI limit could be increased to 100 per cent on a case-to-case basis.

Adil Zainulbhai, Chairman, Quality Council of India, who also spoke on the occasion, said that ‘Make in India’ will work only if quality products are produced. He said that the quality council, set up to improve the quality of goods and services, was already helping 6,000 SME’s to bring up quality standards .

“Soon we will be able to help the 35 million SMEs in India in the next few years. Secondly, we are working on putting in place measures and establishing standards in manufacturing both goods and services to improve the quality of government services to citizens,” he said.

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