45 defence sector companies/JVs operating with foreign OEMs have govt approval

Minister of State for Defence Ajay Bhatt said this in a written response to a query in the Lok Sabha.

Further, the Government has taken several policy initiatives in the past few years and brought reforms to encourage indigenous design, development and manufacture of defence equipment in the country, thereby reducing dependency on imports in coming years.

“These initiatives, inter-alia, include according to priority to the procurement of capital items from domestic sources under Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP)-2020; Notification of Three Positive Indigenisation Lists (PILs) by Department of Defence Production (DDP), MoD with a timeline beyond which they will only be procured from the domestic industry,” he said.

These three lists consist of a total of 3,738 items, out of which 2,786 items have been indigenised till February 2023. Simplification of Industrial licensing process with longer validity period; Liberalisation of FDI policy allowing 74% FDI under automatic route; Simplification of Make Procedure; Launch of Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX) scheme involving start-ups & MSMEs are among other the other moves, according to the response.

The other steps include the Implementation of Public Procurement (Preference to Make in India), Order 2017; Launch of an indigenisation portal namely SRIJAN to facilitate indigenisation by Indian Industry including MSMEs; Reforms in Offset policy with a thrust on attracting investment and Transfer of Technology for Defence manufacturing by assigning higher multipliers; Establishment of two Defence Industrial Corridors one each in Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, it said.