Ordinance factories unable to meet army's ammunition demand: CAG

New Delhi : The ordnance factories, which supply around 80 per cent of its total production items to Indian Army, are unable to meet significant quantity of army''s demand for some principal ammunition thus adversely affecting their operational preparedness, exposes Comptroller And Auditor General (CAG) in its report on (Defence Services) Ordnance Factories presented in the Parliament on Friday.

The reports also point that factories achieved the production targets for only 49 per cent of items. It also highlights that the exports by ordinance factories have decreased by 39 per cent in 2017-18 over 2016-17.

The report clearly states, "A significant quantity of army''s demand for some principal ammunition items remained outstanding as on March 31, 2018, thus adversely affecting their operational preparedness."

This report contains the results of audit of financial transactions of Ordnance Factories Organisation, under the Department of Defence Production of the Ministry of Defence.

The Ordnance Factories Board received budgetary grant of Rs 14,793 crore and Rs 804 crore in 2017-18 for its revenue expenditure and capital expenditure, respectively.

In 2017-18, it supplied materials of Rs 14,251 crore to its different indentors. The reports also points the production capacity for empty and filled fuzes, an essential and critical part of an ammunition to provide safe and reliable detonation at the desired time and place, was not adequate to meet army''s requirement of ammunition.

Filling factories fill empty fuzes with explosives and assemble it with other components to form complete ammunition. It also stated that there were mismatches in the availability of empty fuze from in-house production as well as from trade sources and their filling capacity in factories.

"Major shortfalls in production were noticed for eight types of empty fuzes mainly due to material constraints and quality problems. This resulted in slippages in issue of related ammunitions and spare filled fuzes to the users leading to critical deficiency of seven types of ammunition," the CAG stated.