Stressing the need for self-reliance in defence manufacturing, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday said here India is developing its capabilities to produce low cost and high quality weapon systems to emerge as one of the biggest exporters.
Making these remarks in a webinar organised by the defence ministry, he also invited the private sector to play a major role in defence production. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said the ministry has kept aside nearly `70,000 crore of the total capital outlay this fiscal to procure weapon systems manufactured in India.
He also said the Government will soon issue a second negative list of items which can only be procured locally by the Services. Last year, for the first time, the Government introduced a separate allocation for domestic procurement within the defence budget and had reserved `52,000 crore for 2020-21.
“My Ministry has planned to invest, about 63% of the outlay for 2021-22 on domestic procurement, i.e. about ?70,221 crore for domestic defence procurement during for 2021-22,” Rajnath said at a webinar organised by Depart of Defence Production and Society of Indian Defence Manufacturers. The total capital outlay is `1.35 lakh crores.
The total budget for the coming fiscal is `4.78 lakh crore.
Addressing the webinar on the effective implementation of the Union Budget’s provisions in the defence sector, Modi listed a series of measures taken by his Government to boost self-reliance in the defence sector and rued the fact that the country is amongst the biggest defence importers in the world.
But now, the country is working hard to change the situation and also to enhance its capacities and capabilities at a fast pace, the prime minister asserted.
He said it is not that the people of India do not have the talent or capability and pointed out that the country did not make ventilators before the coronavirus pandemic, but now manufactures thousands of those.
Modi also cited the example of the indigenously-developed Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), Tejas. He said his government has relied on the capabilities of the country’s engineers and scientists on developing Tejas and today, it is flying gracefully in the skies.
A few weeks ago, an order worth `48,000 crore was placed for Tejas, he noted.
Both Modi and Rajnath stressed on simultaneously boosting defence exports while reducing imports. The defence minister said the initiatives resulted in 700% growth in defence exports in the last six years.
He also said India entered in the list of top 25 Exporters in the world as per data published by Swedish think tank SIPRI in 2020.