Capital Outlay for defence services has gone up, says MoS Bhatt

New Delhi, Aug 11 (IANS) MoS Defence Ajay Bhatt on Friday said that there is no meager allocation of resources for defence modernisation and allocation for modernisation under total Capital Outlay for defence services has gone up from Rs 80,959.08 crore in FY 2019-20 to Rs 1,32,301.27 crore in FY 2023-24.

He said that the allocated funds are optimally utilised towards operational activities.

“If required, the schemes are reprioritised to ensure that urgent and critical capabilities are acquired without any compromise to operational preparedness of the Defence Services,” MoS said in a written reply in parliament.

He said that with a view to encourage indigenous industry to contribute to defence modernisation, funds for the financial year 2023-24 have been earmarked in the ratio of 75:25, where 75 percent that is Rs 99,223.03 crore is for Domestic procurement and 25 per cent that is Rs 33,078.24 crore is for Foreign procurement.

He said that the government has taken several policy initiatives in the past few years and brought in reform to encourage indigenous design, development and manufacture of defence equipment, thereby promoting self-reliance in defence manufacturing and technology in the country.

According to the Ministry of Defence these initiatives, inter-alia, include according priority to procurement of capital items from domestic sources under Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP)-2020,  Notification of four ‘Positive Indigenisation Lists’ of total 411 items of Services and four ‘Positive Indigenisation Lists’ of total 4,666 items of Defence Public Sector Undertakings (DPSUs), for which there would be an embargo on the import beyond the timelines indicated against them.