New Delhi: Major structural and outfitting work of Indigenous Aircraft Carrier (IAC) has been completed including starting of main propulsion machinery and trials of power generation machinery. The trials of other ship’s equipment and systems are presently in progress, Rajya Sabha was told on February 10.
The ship’s targeted delivery was affected due to delay in supply of aviation equipment from Russia.
Indian Navy acquires various ships, weapons and equipment including the carrier-based aircraft in accordance with the Maritime Capability Perspective Plan (MCPP) and Long Term Integrated Perspective Plan (LTIPP).
In reply to another question, Minister of State for Defence Shripad Naik said various reforms and steps have been taken to enhance defence exports. These reforms have provided a big boost to defence exports in the recent times. The authorisation for defence exports in the country have grown seven folds in the last two years from Rs 1521.91 crore in 2016-17 to Rs 10745.77 crore in 2018-19 and Rs 5883.24 crore up to December 31 last.
Government has taken various policy initiatives to boost production and promote indigenous design, development and manufacture of defence equipment in collaboration with Indian private sector.
Among the measures taken include a new category of procurement to promote indigenous design and development of defence equipment. It has been accorded top most priority for procurement of capital equipment. Besides this, preference has been accorded to ‘Buy (Indian)’, ‘Buy and Make (Indian)’ and ‘Make’ categories of capital acquisition over ‘Buy (Global)’ and ‘Buy & Make (Global)’ categories.
Due to these initiatives undertaken from April, 2014 till September, 2019, the Government has accorded Acceptance of Necessity (AoN) to 218 proposals, worth Rs 409,244 crore approximately, under ‘Buy (Indian-IDDM)’, ‘Buy (Indian)’, ‘Buy and Make (Indian)’, ‘Buy and Make’, Strategic Partnership Model or ‘Make’ categories of capital procurement as per Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP).
Till date, 281 Indian companies have been issued 461 licenses for manufacturing in defence sector, out of which 73 licensed companies covering 118 licenses have reported commencement of production. Besides, there are more than 8,000 MSMEs which are among the vendor base of OFB and Defence PSUs supplying various items to them.
