Singh said “Our Defence Sector has been identified as one of the prominent sectors under ‘Make in India’ initiative to realise $5 trillion economies by 2024
Bangkok: Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday said India is committed to working toward achieving a $26 billion defence industry by 2025.
Addressing an event called as “India Rising Conference” in Bangkok, Thailand, Mr Rajnath Singh said that with an aim to reduce “dependency” on import, the draft Defence Production Policy 2018 had set a target of $5 billion in defence exports by 2025.
The central government has announced in the General Budget 2018-19 that it will bring out an industry-friendly Defence Production Policy 2018 to promote domestic production by the public sector, private sector and MSMEs.
Singh said “Our Defence Sector has been identified as one of the prominent sectors under ‘Make in India’ initiative to realise $5 trillion economies by 2024. Currently, India ranks 2nd largest importer of arms as of 2014-18 with a share of 9.5 per cent of the total world imports,”.
The defence minister has also acknowledged that nearly $3 billion of the defence items are being manufactured by the Indian private sector.
Rajnath Singh said “Allocation for defence in India’s budget 2019-20 is around $60 bn. Nearly 65 per cent of parts, components, sub-systems of existing systems has been de-licensed, India can now manufacture them and approx $3 billion worth of defence material is being manufactured by the domestic private sector,”
He also said “The draft of Defence Production Policy 2018 had set a goal of $5 billion in defence exports by 2025. While the target is ambitious and encouraging to know that India’s defence exports have nearly grown-up six times over the past two years,”.
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