Revving up arms sales

Four strategies to accelerate India's defence exports

- AJAI SHUKLA

Ministry of Defence (MoD) data indicates that India's defence exports reached a record ₹22,000 crore ($2.63 billion) in 2023-24. This amounts to a startling 31-fold growth over the past decade since 2013-14. Exports growth is showing no signs of diminishing either. Rather, exports have risen 32.5 per cent over the previous financial year (2022-23). And in the first quarter of 2024-25, defence exports surged to ₹6,915 crore - a 78 per cent increase over the ₹3,885 crore exported in the same period the previous year.

Last Monday, defence exports got another boost. An Indian private defence manufacturer, Tata Advanced Systems Limited (TASL), announced an agreement with Morocco's Royal Armed Forces for assembling armoured troop carriers - referred to as wheeled armoured platforms, or WhaP8x8 - in a new manufacturing unit in Casablanca, Morocco. This will be the first defence manufacturing plant established outside India by an Indian defence original equipment manufacturer and Morocco's first large-scale defence manufacturing plant. Given the WhaP's size, protection, versatility and affordability, it is expected to present an attractive buy for African militaries that are combating insurgencies. TASL regards Morocco as a launch customer for cracking the African arms bazaar.

The sharp uptick in India's defence exports is due partly to our migration up the valuation ladder. As recently as a decade ago, India's defence exports consisted mainly of low-cost ammunition and weaponry. Today, New Delhi is pursuing the sale of high-value weapons platforms, such as the Tejas light fighter aircraft, Pinaka multi-barrel rocket launchers and even the sophisticated BrahMos surface-to-surface cruise missile, to East Asian customers such as Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines. The sale of one unit of BrahMos is estimated to be worth about $365 million - approximately the same as an entire year's defence export sales a decade ago.