Make in India: Boost to defence manufacturing

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Through the government’s persistent efforts, the implementation of the Make in India programme in the defence sector has successfully promoted indigenous design, development, and manufacturing of defence equipments.

Capital procurement under the ‘Buy (Indian)’, ‘Buy and Make (Indian)’ ‘Strategic Partnership Model’ or ‘Make’ categories have been given the preference over the other categories under the Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP).

Union Minister of State for Defence, Ajay Bhatt in a written reply to MV Shreyams Kumar today in Rajya Sabha stated that the Government in the last three financial years has given Acceptance of Necessity (AoN) to 119 Defense bids worth Rs. 2,15,690 Crore under various categories of Capital Acquisition, which promotes local production as per DAP.

Key achievements

Many significant projects, such as the 155mm Artillery Gun system ‘Dhanush,’ Bridge Laying Tank, Thermal Imaging Sight Mark-II for T-72 tank, Light Combat Aircraft ‘Tejas, Anti-Submarine Warfare Corvette (ASWC), ‘Akash’ Surface to Air Missile system, Submarine ‘INS Kalvari,’ ‘INS Chennai,’, Arjun Armoured Repair and Recovery Vehicle, Landing Craft Utility,’ and others, have been produced under Make in India in last few years.

”Furthermore, the manufacturing of indigenous defence equipment and inventions is a dynamic process, with development decisions made based on the Armed Forces’ operational requirements. As a result, in such circumstances, no exact timeline can be allocated. Defence equipment is purchased from a variety of domestic and international vendors based on threat perception, operational obstacles, and budget constraints and to keep the Armed Forces in a state of readiness to face the security challenges,” he added.

Measures taken to boost indigenous capabilities in defence production

FDI: Government has increased FDI in Defence Sector up to 74% through the Automatic Route for the companies that seek new defence industrial licence and up to 100% by Government Route.

Defence Industrial Corridors- Promoting Make in India, Government is establishing two Defence Industrial Corridors, one each in the States of Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh.

SRIJAN portal – To promote indigenization SRIJAN portal was launched in 2020. As of date, 10,929 items, which were earlier imported, have been displayed on the portal for indigenization. The Indian industry sector showed interest in 2,890 displayed items so far and DPSUs/OFB are now interacting with these industries to facilitate the indigenization of the items as per extant procedures.

Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX)

In April 2018, the ‘Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX)’ was launched. iDEX aims to create an ecosystem that fosters innovation and technology development in the defence and aerospace sector by engaging industries such as MSMEs, startups, individual innovators, and several R&D institutes and also providing them with grants, funding, and other support to carry out their projects.

About Defence Production and Export Promotion Policy 2020

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) formulated a draft on Defence Production and Export Promotion Policy 2020 (DPEPP 2020). The DPEPP 2020 is envisaged as an important guiding document of MoD for providing a focused, systematic, structured and significant thrust to the country’s defence production capabilities for self-reliance and exports.