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The Government has said that self reliance in the defence sector would not be possible without development of indigenous technology and called for steps to develop related technologies within the country.
The defence industry’s production was ₹80,000 crore in 2018-19 of which ₹16,000 crore was the contribution from the private sector, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said here on Friday at a round-table meeting with chief executives of top defence and aerospace companies on ‘Make in India in Defence Industry’.
He said defence companies have huge opportunities in contributing to domestic market in addition to exports. Singh voiced the government’s desire to encourage private industry investment in defence sector while also strengthening defence PSUs and Ordnance Factory Board (OFB).
He said there is greater possibility now because the contribution of digital technologies in defence sector is on the upswing and India has strong capabilities to develop such technologies where start-ups have a significant role to play.
While highlighting various measures initiated by the government to encourage defence exports, Singh also urged the industry to work towards increasing exports to friendly countries. He said export procedure has been simplified and defence procurement procedure was revised in 2016 to encourage indigenous design, development and manufacture.
“Our nation is confidently scaling new heights based on strong political leadership strengthened by strategic economy,” Singh said.
Singh said the strategic partnership model has been notified to establish defence manufacturing infrastructure and supply chain through which Indian companies could choose a partner through a competitive and transparent process. He added that FDI policy in defence sector has been liberalised.
On offset processing, he said the Ministry has set up an end-to-end offset processing portal through which proposals of value $1.5 billion were processed. Entry barriers for MSMEs were also reduced and this resulted in doubling of defence licences issued from 215 in 2014 to 440 in 2019.
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