India’s Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has underlined the need for revitalizing defence PSUs and ordnance factories for meeting the ammunition needs of India’s defence forces.
“The managements of these organisations need to be ahead of the curve and show dynamism,” as they possess immense and valuable assets that could offer manufacturers huge production opportunities,” she said, while addressing Ammo India 2018, the 1st International Conference on Military Ammunition on the theme, Make in India- Opportunities and Challenges.
The two-day conference will deliberate trends and opportunities for industry in ammunition for small arms; artillery ammunition and rocket- programmes and projects; tank ammunition, missiles, fuze manufacturing and in ammunition manufacturing under Make in India.
Defence Minister revealed that the Indian government has opened up private investment in defence production, including liberalisation of foreign direct investment. It has initiated steps to develop two defence industrial production corridors in the country and also proposes to bring out an industry-friendly Defence Production Policy 2018 to promote domestic production by public sector, the private sector and MSMEs.
The Defence Minister also released a FICCI-CENJOWS knowledge paper on ‘Ammunition Manufacturing in India: Road to Self-reliance’.
She said that the government expects whole-hearted participation of Indian industry and foreign OEMs to leverage the indigenous capability and opportunities for self-reliance in defence production.
Sitharaman said that the announcement was made in the 2018-19 Budget that two defence industrial production corridors would be established. The one between Chennai and Bangalore via a stretch of ordnance factories was coming up well and it was encouraging that SMEs had started to bring in start-ups to produce for the armed forces.
Coordination between the DIPP and the Home Ministry was being actively pursued and this should give comfort to OEMs that different arms of the government were engaged in a well-oiled effort. The government was also actively working on the second corridor between Aligarh-Agra-Jhansi-Chitrakoot-Kanpur-Lucknow.
She also said that under the ‘Make II’ initiative, procedure had been simplified and once a prototype was developed and tried out, manufacturers should not worry about orders as these would be forthcoming.
Lt. General, Giri Raj Singh, SM, Director General Ordnance Services, Indian Army, in his address, pointed out that under one of the largest procurement initiatives in arms and ammunition launched by the Defence Ministry, RFPs for eight projects were released for procurement of medium and large calibre ammunition for the Industry private sector. These projects entail an expenditure of Rs. 70,000 crore in 10 years. The final corrigendum, incorporating the amendments, to the RFPs would be out in the next one month. He said that the vision was complete self-reliance in armament manufacturing and the government’s ‘Make in India’ programme has paved the way for making the vision a reality.
Mr. Rashesh Shah, President, FICCI, called for fast-tracking the clearances of licences for production by the private industry, easing of restrictions on the number of contracts a company could bid for and reduction in the requirement of high earnest money for procurement orders. He also underlined the need for creating a level-playing field for all players to speed up indigenous defence manufacturing.