With the objective of faster development and production of weapons to maintain operational readiness of the armed forces, the Government has given approval to “45 companies/joint ventures” operating in the defence sector with foreign OEMs (original equipment manufacturers).
Minister of State for Defence Ajay Bhatt informed this to the Lok Sabha on Friday.
The Centre 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, he said.
“These initiatives, inter alia, include according priority to procurement of capital items from domestic sources under Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP)-2020; notification of three Positive Indigenisation Lists (PILs) by the Department of Defence Production (DDP), Ministry of Defence, with a timeline beyond which they will only be procured from the domestic industry,” the Minister said.
