The much-awaited Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP), which is expected to streamline procurement of defence hardware and give a push to indigenisation, is likely to be approved by the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) in the first week of January.
“DPP is almost final. By end of December or first week of January the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) should be approving it. We have taken recommendations from the Dherendra committee,” Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said on Monday. He was speaking after formally launching the 'Make in India' portal of the department of defence production which will function as an interface between the government and the defence industry and will be a one-stop shop for all queries on defence procurement.
Addressing a long term demand of the private sector, the portal has a list of facilities of the armed forces and other institutions which are available to the industry for carrying out test trials of the equipment they have developed.
The committee appointed under former home secretary Dhirendra Singh should suggest recommendations to promote private sector participation and push forward ‘Make in India’ in the defence sector. It has suggested at least 40 per cent indigenous content in the ‘Buy Indian’ category of the DPP which was earlier at 30 per cent.
There has been some debate within the Ministry if 40 per cent can be executed. Putting those doubts to rest, Mr. Parrikar said that they would go ahead with that as the domestic content has to be increased to promote indigenisation. “If we don’t take such measures, it will not happen.”
Stating that achieving the target of 70 per cent indigenisation is tough but not impossible, Mr. Parrikar said that the government is trying to increase it from the current 30 per cent to 40 per cent in about five years time. “Lot of problems are faced because of mind-sets. We are trying to change that in the Ministry. We have made a lot of progress,” he added.
