Growth and Synerymost Important for DPSUs

Indigenous industry has a big opportunity for participation in defence production sector, thanks to dynamic decision and policy making of this government. Country’s defence budget is 6.5 per cent of country’s GDP, and there has been an increase of 13 per cent in last one year.

- R.K. Tyagi

Today, the players of defence production in India are 9 DPSUs, 41 ordinance factory boards, 50 DRDO labs and 150 private players among them eminent ones are Mahindra, L &T, Reliance, Tata etc. Out of them 50 are parts of global supply chain. Today, these companies are emerging, as they meet global standards and quality expectations. When one looks at total opportunity space in next 10 to 15 years, it appears that it is an opportunity equivalent to 4 hundred 50 billion US dollar. When we talk about aerospace -- LUH, LCH, LCA, SVT 40, for Naval system -- Nuclear submarines, MCMBs, NMRH brigades, IACs and Army is looking for Main Battery tanks, guns, FICVs and tactical communication systems and of course they are looking for lot of offset opportunities to the tune of 12-13 billion US dollars, in term of projects that are executed like MMRCA, Apache, Chinu and others project which are in the pipeline. So there is lot of opportunity for the Indian industry. Therefore, role of industry bodies like Assocham become very important. There are two key words for defence today, one is growth and another is synergy. If there is a competition between private and public sector then possibly no one grows. If there is a conflict then both will suffer. It is time of synergy, where both sectors need to come and grow together. There are 7 areas which is important for policy makers.