New Delhi (The Hawk): The Indian government is leaving no stone unturned to support its flagship ‘Make in India’ initiative. In recent years, the country has ramped up efforts towards facilitating global investments in India and strengthening local manufacturing. One major area of focus towards indigenization has been the defence sector, as several policy initiatives & reforms to encourage indigenous design, development has been taken up under the able leadership of Prime Minister Modi. Thus, reducing dependency on imports of defence equipment.
As part of this, Ministry of Defence has launched the ‘SRIJAN’ portal to promote indigenization by the industry. Where, 19509 defence items, which were earlier imported, have been uploaded on the portal for indigenisation till date. Out of them, the Indian industry has shown interest for indigenisation of 4006 defence items so far. With these actions from the Government, the expenditure on defence procurement from foreign sources has reduced from 46% to 36%, thereby reducing import burden, in the last 3 (three) years i.e., from 2018-19 to 2020-21. Further, the value of production of public & private sector defence companies have increased from Rs. 79,071 crores to Rs. 84,643 crores in last two years i.e., 2019-20 and 2020-21. To supplement this public-private endeavour, Technology Development Board, a statutory body under Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India supports M/s Ghaziabad Precision Products Private Limited, (GPP), Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh for ‘Development by Critical machining & Inspection process of accessory components of SU-30MK1 Aircraft viz. Rotary Pipe Union & Cover respectively, valve train components of 1500 HP Battle Tank Engine and valve train components of Engine Components of Regular BEML Engines.’ TDB has approved assistance of ?5.5 crores out of ?14.2 crores of the total project cost. Through this project, the company aims to set up a facility for the development and supply of critically machined accessory components of ‘SUKHOI-30MKI’ to Hindustan Aeronautic Ltd (HAL) and valve train components of 1500 HP 12V, 25 Litres capacity diesel engine of Armoured Fighting Vehicle (AFV) being developed by Combat Vehicles Research and Development establishment (CVRDE), Avadi and regular Bharat Earth Movers Limited (BEML) engine to BEML. GPP is a registered vendor of both HAL and BEML and through this project will be participating in the process of import substitution for some of the components. Sh. Rajesh Kumar Pathak, IP&TAFS, Secretary, TDB said that, “To help in the development of indigenous manufacturing ecosystem under ‘Make in India’ initiative of the GOI, TDB has been supporting many imported technologies for wider domestic applications to enhance the local capacity building for such critical machine components and services through private manufactures across sectors viz. Defence, Health & Pharma, Automobile and Drone Manufacturing etc. This project is one such initiative for Defence sector wherein M/s Ghaziabad Precision Products Private Limited will manufacture critical components essential to SU-30MK1 Aircraft, the backbone of the Indian Air Force's fighter fleet.”