 "Security personnel take positions during a gun battle with suspected militants at the Army camp in Nagrota in Jammu")
At a meeting organised by Ficci on Monday, the defence ministry will clarify terms and opportunities for private industry to build military ammunition. For private firms, this potentially opens the door just a chink to a lucrative ammunition market that generates recurring orders worth Rs 50 billion every year.
The government is bringing in private industry in order to avoid repeating what happened during the Kargil Conflict in 1999, when ammunition stockpiles proved inadequate even for that short-duration, localised conflict. Eventually emergency imports were needed to keep the army’s guns firing.
A year ago, on March 25 and 27, 2017,
