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Mumbai: Giving a major push towards a self-reliant India in the defence sector, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh today said that the Government has decided to put an embargo on imports of 101 defence related items.
Making slew of announcements through series of tweets, Singh said, taking a cue from that evocation, the Ministry of Defence has prepared a list of 101 items for which there would be an embargo on the import beyond the timeline indicated against them. This is a big step towards self-reliance in defence.
The defence minister said, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has given a clarion call for a self-reliant India based on the five pillars, which are economy, infrastructure, system, demography and demand and announced a special economic package for Self-Reliant India named ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’.
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He expressed hope that this decision will offer a great opportunity to the Indian defence industry to manufacture the items in the negative list by using their own design and development capabilities or adopting the technologies designed and developed by DRDO to meet the requirements of the Armed Forces.
The list is prepared by the ministry of defence after several rounds of consultations with all stakeholders, including the Armed Forces, public and private industry to assess current and future capabilities of the Indian industry for manufacturing various ammunition & equipment within India, he added.
Almost 260 schemes of such items were contracted by the Tri-Services at an approximate cost of Rs 3.5 lakh crore between April 2015 and August 2020. It is estimated that contracts worth almost Rs 4 lakh crore will be placed upon the domestic industry within the next 6 to 7 years, the defence minister said.
“Of these, items worth almost Rs 1,30,000 crore each are anticipated for the Army and the Air Force while items worth almost Rs 1,40,000 crore are anticipated by the Navy over the same period, he said.
The list also includes, wheeled Armoured Fighting Vehicles (AFVs) with indicative import embargo date of December 2021, of which the Army is expected to contract almost 200 at an approximate cost of over Rs 5,000 crore.
He said the embargo on imports is planned to be progressively implemented between 2020 to 2024. “Our aim is to appraise the Indian defence industry about the anticipated requirements of the Armed Forces so that they are better prepared to realise the goal of indigenisation”, he said.
The Union Defence Minister said all necessary steps would be taken to ensure that timelines for production of equipment as per the negative import list (NIL) are met, which will include a co-ordinated mechanism for handholding of the industry by the defence services.
“More such equipment for import embargo would be identified progressively by the DMA in consultation with all stakeholders. A due note of this will also be made in the DAP to ensure that no item in the negative list is processed for import in the future”, Singh said.
The Ministry of Defence has also bifurcated the capital procurement budget for 2020-21 between domestic and foreign capital procurement routes, he said adding, and a separate budget head has been created with an outlay of nearly Rs 52,000 crore for domestic capital procurement in the current financial year.
