Why in News ?

During the Parliament session Government provided the details for Indigenous Production of Defence Equipment to boost Indian products.

What are the various initiatives ?

• New category of capital procurement Buy {Indian-IDDM (Indigenously Designed, Developed and Manufactured)} has been introduced.
  • It aims to promote indigenous design and development of defence equipment.
• There are specific reservations for MSMEs under the ‘Make’ procedure.
• Atmanirbhar Bharat campaign of Govt of India, Ministry of Defence (MoD)
  • • It prepared a list of 101 items for which there would be an embargo on the import beyond the timeline indicated against them.
    • Opportunity to the Indian defence industry to meet the requirements of the Armed Forces in the coming years.
    • These includes high technology weapon systems like artillery guns, assault rifles, corvettes, sonar systems, transport aircrafts, light combat helicopters (LCHs), radars
• Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX) has been launched in April, 2018.
  • iDEX is aimed at creation of an ecosystem to foster innovation and technology development in Defence and Aerospace
  • A maximum of Rs 1.5 crore funding is available to a participant for development of a prototype.
  • iDEX is also aimed at supporting MSMEs, Start-ups, Individual Innovators etc.
• Strategic Partnership (SP) Model in May, 2017, which envisages establishment of long-term strategic partnerships.
• An indigenization portal namely SRIJAN has been launched for DPSUs/OFB/Services with an industry interface to provide development support to MSMEs/Startups/Industry for import substitution.
• MSMEs are partnering in DRDO projects and also DRDO developed technologies are also being transferred to them.
• Defence Offset guidelines have further paved the way for proactive participation of MSME of India.
• Defence Investor Cell has been created to provide all necessary information including addressing queries related to investment opportunities, procedures and regulatory requirements for investment in the sector.

Source : PIB

Topic

GS II : Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation

Current Affairs Compilation : 21 September 2020