Govt. planning to corporatise ordnance factories

Plan is to change them into PSUs to make them more accountable

January 18, 2015 01:54 am | Updated November 16, 2021 05:20 pm IST - NEW DELHI:

Days after terminating the contract of DRDO chief Dr. Avinash Chander, the government is planning to corporatise some of the ordnance factories.

The plan is to initially corporatise about 10 ordnance factories and turn them into Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) to make them more accountable and increase their capabilities, sources in Defence Ministry said.

Those under consideration are the cloth making and equipment factories in the Kanpur belt. A note on this matter has already been circulated in the highest echelons of the government and the proposal is likely to get the government nod by April, the sources added.

These factories are into manufacturing personnel clothing, parachute material, small arms, metallurgical equipment, shells and other such equipment.

The move comes close on the heels of Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar promising a major overhaul of the DRDO and defence production units.

This is not for the first time though that corporatisation of ordnance factories is being considered. In the UPA I regime too, the government mooted such a proposal in accordance with the recommendations of the Vijay Kelkar committee towards increasing self-reliance in defence preparedness. However, the proposal did not go through due to opposition from trade unions.

In the blog of the Indian National Defence Workers Federation, its General Secretary, R. Srinivasan has stated that in a meeting with the Chairman, Ordnance Factories Board (OFB) at Kolkata, they learnt that the government was against further expansion of the ordnance equipment factories.

Mr. Parrikar had asked the OFB Chairman to focus on core-competency areas namely ammunition, hardware, armoured vehicles and artillery and in future ordnance factories have to compete with other firms for supplying equipment to the armed forces.

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