Indigenisation of defence items with the Industry in full swing
In continuous pursuit to achieve self-reliance in defence manufacturing and minimise imports under ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’, Department of Defence Production (DDP), the Ministry of Defence has intensified the drive for indigenisation of defence items by its DPSUs. The progress is being reviewed on weekly basis by Defence Secretary Dr Ajay Kumar.
A comprehensive user-friendly ‘Dashboard’ on its SRIJAN Portal has been developed to monitor the status of progress of indigenisation. This dashboard enables real-time end-to-end updates of various activities being taken up by the respective DPSUs during the process of indigenisation. It provides transparent information, analytics and various customised reports to assess the performance of the DPSUs.
Relevant information like details of items to be indigenised, tentative order quantity, concerned DPSU, route of indigenisation to be adopted, details of in-charge Nodal Officer, details of expression of Interests, Requests for Proposal, project sanction order, etc. have been kept in the public domain to make it accessible to the industry.
The dashboard will be accessible by industry shortly. The industry partners can view the details on the dashboard and avail opportunities as per their capabilities in order to become partners in ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’. Moreover, the Ministry will monitor the actions taken by the DPSUs through this dashboard. It is expected that the dashboard is likely to become a game-changer to intensify the indigenisation process.
It may be mentioned that DDP had notified two Positive Indigenisation Lists in December 2021 and March 2022 in respect of DPSUs. The first list contains 2,851 items, out of which 2,500 items are already indigenised and 351 items are being indigenized. The second report notified 107 major Line Replacement Units/Sub-systems for indigenisation. These items pertain to Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited (MDL), Hindustan Shipyard Limited (HSL), Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers Ltd (GRSE), Goa Shipyard Limited (GSL), Armoured Vehicles Nigam Limited (AVNL), Munitions India Limited (MIL), Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL) and Bharat Earth Movers Limited (BEML). The weekly review at the level of Defence Secretary and the monitoring through the dashboard have resulted in substantial progress and the DPSUs are now getting good responses from the industry.
Out of 107 items, DPSUs have already issued Expression of Interest (EoIs) for 98 items and the action is on for issuing EoIs for the remaining nine items. Out of the 98 EoIs, 28 cases have already progressed in the next stages and 70 EoIs are in the active stage. The BEL has already issued five Project Sanction Orders (PSO) to the Industry for the development of items under Make –II route. Further, 11 items, including nine items of AVNL and two items of GRSE, are in Prototype Design & Development stage under various routes.