Hyderabad, January 09: The revised Defence Procurement Policy that came into force on January 1 aims at achieving a high level of indigenisation in defence production and offers a wide range of investment opportunities to vendors to participate in defence procurement, according to M.M.Pallam Raju, minister of state for defence.
Delivering the key-note address on the concluding day of the two-day national seminar, Swavlamban-2011, on ‘Building capability through self reliance in defence production’, jointly organised by the Indian School of Business and the College of Defence Management, here today, he said the policy also encouraged participation of private shipbuilding industry in the country and promotion of indigenisation in warship construction.
The role of private sector had changed from that of supplying raw materials and subsystems to manufacturing complete advanced systems and partnering the public sector in the indigenisation of defence production, he said.
“The scope of the Defence Offset Policy guidelines enumerated in the DPP have been expanded to include civil aerospace, internal security and training. A wide range of weapons and services for counter-terrorism have been included in the list of products under internal security,” Pallam Raju said.
The value of offset contracts was likely to be more than `10,000 crore during the 11th plan period, he said and added that over 35 Indian companies in the public and private sectors would be involved in getting the offset benefits.
“In addition to the public sector, it is necessary to leverage the technical expertise available in the private sector towards achieving self-sufficiency in defence production. This step would also provide saving of foreign exchange reserves which are draining out due to imports of military requirements.”
–Agencies