In a bid to provide further fillip to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s clarion call for Atmanirbhar Bharat (Self-reliant India), India’s defence ministry today (Aug 9) announced it will suspend the import of 101 defence items.
Embargo on imports will be progressively implemented between 2020 to 2024
The “embargoed items” include high technology weapon systems like artillery guns, assault rifles, corvettes, sonar systems, and transport aircraft.
The Ministry of Defence is now ready for a big push to #AtmanirbharBharat initiative. MoD will introduce import embargo on 101 items beyond given timeline to boost indigenisation of defence production.
— Rajnath Singh (@rajnathsingh) August 9, 2020
Here’s the complete list of 101 defence items:
The list of items was prepared after wide consultations with the armed forces, state-owned and private companies to “assess current and future capabilities of the Indian industry for manufacturing various ammunition & equipment within India”, Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said.
Almost 260 schemes of such items were contracted by the three military wings at an approximate cost of ₹3.5 trillion between April 2015 and August 2020, he said.
It is estimated that contracts worth almost ₹4 trillion will be placed upon the domestic industry within the next 6 to 7 years.
The Ministry of Defence has also bifurcated the capital procurement budget for 2020-21 between domestic and foreign capital procurement routes. A separate budget head has been created with an outlay of nearly ₹52,000 crore for domestic capital procurement in the current financial year.
The list of 101 embargoed items comprises of not just simple parts but also some high tech weapon systems like artillery guns, assault rifles, corvettes, sonar systems, transport aircraft, LCHs, radars & many other items to fulfil needs of our Defence Services.
India’s major equipment imports include rockets, simulator and component repair facility for tanks from Russia; laser designation pods, radars, aircraft pods, radios, weapons for ‘Garud’ commandos and missiles from Israel; aircraft, helicopters, missiles, artillery guns and simulators from the US, and aircraft, ammunition, bimodular charge system and high zone modules of artillery guns from France.