Manohar Parrikar meets ‘private players’ for in-house deals

Brushing aside opposition, the government signaled its strong intent to forge strategic partnerships with the private sector, by holding a two-hour-long closed-door parley with domestic private companies on Saturday.

“Private players, who were divided into five subgroups, made their respective recommendations. The defence ministry will go through the suggestions and take a call on the future course of action very soon,” an official source told this newspaper.

Besides the private players, defence minister Manohar Parrikar, top ministry officials, top officials from the armed forces and other allied organisations also took part in the deliberations. The discussions are expected to fructify into a policy which will form part of the latest Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP), much of which has already been made public except for the chapter on strategic partnerships.

The ministry’s stand is in consonance with the Make in India programme where the idea is to manufacture defence products and ancillary parts domestically and to prevent monopolies by just a few big companies.

“The thinking in the ministry is to discourage monopoly-like situations on one hand and to encourage small and medium scale industries if they are competent,” the source added.

Mr Parrikar has already taken a dim view of the opposition to rope in the industry for strategic partnerships. Recently, he had stated that many VIPs had written to him expressing concern about strategic partnerships.

“Many a time the letters had similar content, which showed that at times the VIPs were signing off letters written by some other party,” he had said in an official function last month.

On May 26, Mr Parrikar had named five private sector honchos to head the sub-groups to suggest steps to choose strategic partners. The five sub-groups are Aircraft and Helicopters, Armoured fighting vehicles, submarines, ammunition, and macro process management of issues.

The absence of any representatives of the defence PSUs had already demonstrated the inclination of the government to accommodate the private sector in the defence manufacturing space.

In a recent policy decision, the government had also announced a level-playing field to the private sector in terms of excise duty/custom duty at par with the public sector,