MoD: No plan to review production policy

Speculation has been rife about a revision of the Defense Production Policy, after the new government led by Prime Minister Narenda Modi introduced the ‘Make in India’ initiative, meant to encourage domestic and foreign manufacturers to build in India. Defense production has been said to be the core of this policy, keeping in mind the amount of investment and the value of potential orders involved.

For this, there has been much discussion, especially during Aero India 2015, about the possibility of reforms in existing policies to incentivize the investment and transfer of technology by foreign companies for production in India; for instance resolving problems in the the policies and regulations for implementation of offset requirements in defense procurement.

The Minister of State for Defense, Rao Inderjit Singh, told the Rajya Sabha on March 03 in response to a question from the MP Pramod Tiwari on ‘whether the Government proposes to review Defence Production Policy formulated earlier’:

“At present, there is no proposal to review the Defence Production Policy. The policy was announced in 2011 and since then, several steps have been initiated to implement the policy.”