Jaitley releases booklet on steps to boost defence production

Defence Minister Arun Jaitley today released a booklet, highlighting efforts by the government to promote indigenisation of defence sector in the country and ramp up production of critical military platforms.
It mentions a number of policy initiatives including relaxation in FDI in the defence sector, providing exchange rate variation to protect domestic industry, liberalising licensing policy and streamlining defence offset guidelines.
As per official data, India has spent a whopping Rs 2.42 lakh crore in the last four years in procuring weapons systems and other military hardware to boost its defence preparedness.
Out of the total capital expenditure, procurement from foreign companies totalled Rs 1.05 lakh crore while the volume of purchase from Indian vendors was Rs 1.37 lakh crore.

The booklet also highlighted a number of other steps to promote defence indigenisation such as doing away with end- user certificate, revising procedure to promote design and development of major platforms and aligning payment terms of defence public sector undertakings (PSUs) etc.
Ordnance factories and defence PSUs have not only enhanced their production from Rs 44,000 crore to Rs 56,000 crore annually but have also delivered many state-of-the-art platforms to the armed forces, including light combat aircraft 'Tejas' and surface-to-air missile system 'Akash', according to the document.
It said all naval ships and submarines on order are being constructed in Indian shipyards and percentage of capital procurement from Indian vendors has gone up from 47 to 61 in the last three years.