Industry bodies see future in new defence policies

NEW DELHI - As the defence ministry unveiled its new production and procurement policies, leading industry bodies Thursday reacted favourably to the goal of India eventually achieving self-reliance in military equipment and also involving the private sector.

Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Deputy Director General (Defence) Gurpal Singh, commending the newly-released policies, said: “We appreciate the defence ministry’s initiative to formulate the first-ever production policy which acknowledges that private sector would have to play a larger role in defence production.”

Gurpal Singh said CII anticipated that an implementation road map with benchmarks would be announced sooner to take forward the policy outlines released earlier in the day.

ASSOCHAM president Dilip Modi welcomed the defence production policy-2011 for “making a big difference in unshackling the country’s dependence on imports” and development and sourcing of majority of its requirements indigenously.

Dilip Modi further said the policy was enriched through stipulating definite milestones and targets with accountability for action and provide teeth to the implementers to achieve the “substantive self-reliance.”

PHD Chamber president Salil Bhandari said, “The policy would be instrumental in harnessing the combined skills of public and private sector, with the aim of achieving self reliance in defence production. This could herald an era of unprecedented defence industrial growth in India.”

The mandate to enhance potential of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in indigenization of defence production as well as to broaden the defence research and development base of the country was a much-awaited announcement, as worldwide, the global original equipment manufacturers work in close coordination with SMEs, he added.

Industry consultants Deloitte’s director Nidhi Goyal, in her reaction, noted that the defence ministry was encouraging participation of the Indian industry through the new policies it has announced.

“This systematic approach by the government, although slow, could be expected to meet dual benefits of boosting Indian industry and at the same time encouraging foreign companies for procuring goods used for homeland security and civil aviation and meet offset obligations,” Nidhi Goyal said.

“We need to wait and see how effectively the government works with the private sector to develop indigenous platforms and systems given the limitations of time and technology that may be available in the country,” she added.

Consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers executive director and sector leader Dhiraj Mathur, said by announcing the new production policy, the Defence Ministry had taken the first step towards promoting domestic industry in the sector to achieve the long-term goals of self-reliance.

But, the initiative needed to be taken forward by establishing systems for implementing the policy outlines, he said.

“The production policy seems to be generic in nature and a compilation of stated objectives. We have to see how we go about to realise these objectives. The Defence Ministry needs to establish a monitoring system for implementation of these policies,” Mathur added.

–Indo Asian News Service