By: Vivek Raghuvanshi
NEW DELHI – National Institution for Transforming India (Niti Aayog), an India policy think tank, called upon the country's domestic private defense industry to intervene with the Ministry of Defense (MoD) and other ministries to fast track domestic projects and convert some global buy projects to Make in India projects.
The domestic projects are being made under the category, Buy Indian and "Buy and Make India" in which tenders are given only to domestic companies. However, the ruling government has only approved the potential for such projects; no contracts have been awarded so far.
Some of the defense domestic projects which were sought to be fast tracked include Make Indian projects like light vehicles and ammunition carrying vehicles.
In addition, the request to Niti Aayog was also made to recommend conversion of some global defense projects into Make in India projects so as to allow the Foreign OEMs to manufacture in the country as part of their offset obligations. These include 155/52 self propelled artillery tracked guns, 155/52 towed artillery guns, air defense fire control radar system, very short range air defense system and Spike anti-tank guided missile system.
"We have a robust [defense] procurement system in place and Niti Aayog is only a think tank and cannot be a major policy influencer in the defense space," a senior MoD official said. "MoD is particularly unhappy with private sector, that some Indian private defense companies want defense orders without R&D investments."
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