New Delhi: Defence minister Rajnath Singh on Friday voiced the government’s desire to encourage private industry investment in defence sector while also strengthening defence PSUs and Ordnance Factory Board (OFB).
Addressing CEOs of top defence and aerospace companies at a roundtable with the theme “Make in India in Defence Industry”, Mr Singh said defence companies have huge opportunities in contributing to domestic market in addition to exports.
Mr 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 the defence sector has been liberalised.
Regarding the offset processing, Mr Singh said that 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 licenses issued from 215 in 2014 to 440 in 2019.
He said the Defence Investor Cell, established a year ago in the ministry, has processed nearly 550 queries and grievances.
While highlighting various measures initiated by the government to encou-rage defence exports, Mr Singh urged the industry to work towards increasing exports to friendly countries.
The defence minister said export procedure has been simplified.
Defence minister said self reliance in defence sector would not be possible without development of indigenous technology and called for steps to develop related technologies within the country. 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 startups have a significant role to play.
Mr Singh said the Indian defence industry’s production was Rs 80,000 crore in 2018-19 of which Rs 16,000 crore was the contribution from the private sector.
