The Government has taken several policy initiatives in the past few years and brought in reforms to encourage indigenous design, development and manufacture of defence equipment in the country, thereby expanding the production of indigenous defence equipment. These initiatives, inter-alia, include according priority to procurement of capital items from domestic sources under Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP)-2020; Announcement of 18 major defence platforms for industry led design & development in March 2022; Notification of three ‘Positive Indigenisation Lists’ of total 310 items of Services and two ‘Positive Indigenisation Lists’ of total 2958 items of Defence Public Sector Undertakings (DPSUs) for which there would be an embargo on the import beyond the timelines indicated against them; Simplification of Industrial licensing process with longer validity period; Liberalization of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) policy allowing 74% FDI under automatic route; Simplification of Make Procedure; Launch of Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX) scheme involving start-ups & Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs); Implementation of Public Procurement (Preference to Make in India) Order 2017; Launch of an indigenization portal namely SRIJAN to facilitate indigenization by Indian Industry including MSMEs; Reforms in Offset policy with thrust on attracting investment and Transfer of Technology for Defence Manufacturing by assigning higher multipliers;  and  Establishment of two Defence Industrial Corridors, one each in Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu; Opening up of Defence Research & Development (R&D) for industry, start-ups and academia with 25% of defence R&D budget earmarked to promote development of defence technology in the country; Progressive increase in allocation of Defence Budget of military modernization for procurement from domestic sources, etc.

With these actions of the Government, the expenditure on defence procurement from foreign sources which used to be 46% of the overall expenditure has reduced to 36% in the last four years i.e. 2018-19 to 2021-22.

This information was given by Raksha Rajya Mantri Shri Ajay Bhatt in a written reply to Shri Vijay Pal Singh Tomar in Rajya Sabha today.

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