42 Countries Now Buying Indian Defence Products
Prime Minister Narendra Modi government has been stressing on defence manufacturing in India. He had outlined the MAKE IN INDIA program in 2014 itself to build up the country’s manufacturing base, ensure jobs for its youth and to bring down India’s arms import bill.
India in 2019 is still the second largest importer of defence equipment just behind Saudi Arabia according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
However things has been changing and India has been making steady progress in exports of defence products to a number of countries including those who are big names in the export market like the US, Australia, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, South Africa and Sweden.
There are 42 Countries in the export list that also included Azerbaijan, Seychelles, Estonia, Indonesia, Guinea and the Philippines.
Minister of State for Defence, Shripad Naik, in a written reply to Rajya Sabha on Monday said the “cost of the items and quantum of foreign exchange earned varies from company to company” and the ministry did not keep a record of the quantum of foreign exchange earned
Indian has started defence product exports to even Australia which included 5.56x45mm Ball MK N(SS109) cartridges, while it exported protective headgear and hard armour plates to Azerbaijan, helmets, bomb suppression blanket and soft armour panels to Germany, sleeping bags to Guinea, mortar shell covers to Israel, hard armour plates to the Netherlands and the US, radar parts, bullet proof vests and helmets with accessories to Singapore, detonators to South Africa and night vision binoculars to Thailand.
Indian exports to Qatar, Lebanon, Iraq, Ecuador, Uruguay, Japan and Egypt primarily comprised body protecting equipment, Naik said in his written response.
The minister’s response in Parliament comes a week after India organised the biennial Defence Expo in Lucknow that drew more than 1,000 Indian and foreign companies and more than 40 foreign delegations.
In his speech at the DefExpo last week, Modi urged foreign manufacturers to set up base in India listing the steps the government has taken to improve India’s investment climate. He noted that the export of defence equipment from India was about ₹2,000 crore in 2014, the year he took office.
In the last two years, it had gone up to ₹17,000 crore and in the next five years, India’s target was to export of $5 billion worth of military hardware which is about ₹35,000 crore, Modi added.
