Make in India: Defence ministry identifies 25 projects

MUMBAI: The Ministry of Defence has identified about 25 projects in the Make In India initiative and will open them up to the industry for participation shortly a senior official said Tuesday.
""We have initially shortlisted these. There will have to be many interactions with the ministry and other stakeholders to finalise them," said A.K. Gupta secretary, defence production.He didn't give any estimates of a possible size of the projects.
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India is one the biggest spenders in this sector. It has signed contracts worth about $15 billion in this segment in the last one year.
Gupta also said government's new, simplified defence procurement procedure has made things much more 'transparent'.
"A lot of things have been streamlined. Earlier what used to happen in offset agreements was that once you are part of an agreement, you can't change anything. Now full flexibility has been given to the industry to choose their offset partners and components provided both are in the eligibility list," he said.
Gupta added that the government has provided 319 licenses to 190 companies since 2001. Of these, 50 companies having 79 licences have already started production.