Govt clears 19 defence proposals to boost local manufacturing

New Delhi: The government today said it has cleared 19 long-pending defence sector projects, including that of Reliance Aerospace Technologies, Bharat Forge, Mahindra Telephonic Integrated Systems, Tata Advanced Materials and Punj Lloyd.

“Giving a big boost to ‘Make In India’, the Licensing Committee chaired by Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP), said it last week cleared 19 proposals for grant of industrial licence,” the Commerce and Industry Ministry said in a statement.

In addition, applicants in 14 pending cases have been informed that licences were not required anymore as a vast number of defence items have been delicensed, it added.

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“It is expected that clearance of these 33 applications and the deregulation of defence product list excluding a large number of components from purview of industrial licensing will provide a major impetus to advanced manufacturing in defence sector,” the statement said.

Many of the 19 proposals, have pending with the government for last several years.

“It has been possible to approve these cases as consequence of the simplification of FDI policy,” the Ministry said.

As per the liberalised policy, the FDI cap in defence has raised from 26 per cent to 49 per cent.

It also permitted portfolio investments of up to 24 per cent of the total equity of the investee/joint venture company under automatic route and doing away with requirement of 51per cent equity ownership by a single Indian investor/company.

India imports up to 70 per cent of its military hardware.

The Licensing Committee also discussed the possibility of removal of stipulation of annual capacity in the industrial licence as also to permit sale of licensed items to other entities under the control of Home Ministry, state governments, PSUs and other defence licensed companies without requiring approval of the Department of Defence Production.

“It was agreed that the above stipulation would be relaxed subject to submission of bi-annual returns by the unit. The DIPP would be shortly notifying the above decision by issue of a Press Note,” the statement said.

Further, it said the government has taken a series of measures to improve the Ease of Doing Business in India.

“The emphasis has been on simplification and rationalisation of the existing rules and introduction of information technology to make governance more efficient, effective, simple and user friendly,” it said.

The measures include 24X7 availability of online filing of industrial licenxe and industrial entrepreneur memorandum applications, increasing initial validity period of industrial licence to three years, streamlining the processing of applications for grant of extension of validity of the licence.

PTI