Aatma Nirbhar Bharat: India bans import of 101 defence items

New Delhi: To make the Indian defence industry self-reliant and boost indigenisation, the Ministry of Defence banned the import of 101 items on Sunday.

The MoD 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 Rs 52,000 crore for domestic capital procurement in the current financial year.

With the latest embargo on import of 101 items, it is estimated that contracts worth almost Rs 4 lakh crore will be placed upon the domestic industry within the next five to seven years. Of these, items worth almost Rs 1.3 lakh crore each are anticipated for the Army and the Air Force while items worth almost Rs 1.4 lakh crore are anticipated by the Navy over the same period.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said, "The Ministry of Defence is now ready for a big push to the Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative. MoD will introduce an import embargo on 101 items beyond the given timeline to boost indigenisation of defence production."

The minister pointed out that the decision to ban import of 101 defence items came after Prime Minister Narendra Modi had given a clarion call for a self-reliant India. Modi in his address to the nation on May 12 called for a self-reliant India based on the five pillars, i.e., economy, infrastructure, system, demography and demand and announced a special economic package for a self-reliant India named 'Atma Nirbhar Bharat'.

Taking a cue from that, the Department of Military Affairs (DMA) and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) prepared a list of 101 items for which there would be an embargo on the import beyond the timeline indicated against them. This is a big step towards self-reliance in defence.

It also offers a great opportunity to the Indian defence industry to rise to the occasion to manufacture the items in the negative list using their own design and development capabilities or by adopting the technologies designed and developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) to meet the requirements of the armed forces in the coming years.