‘Defence corridor in UP will help cut import bill’
LUCKNOW: Defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday said the country’s second defence equipment manufacturing corridor in Uttar Pradesh will re-energise 13 production units, which had been lifeless in the state for 25 years, and cut the import bill.
Sitharaman was speaking on the second day of the Uttar Pradesh Investors’ Summit here. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had made the announcement about the defence corridor on the inaugural day of the summit.
She said India was the third largest in the world in defence procurement.
“We have a fundamental ecosystem to produce on our own and reduce import bills but they (defence production units) are languishing. The corridor will re-energise the capabilities and cut import bills,” she said.
Sitharaman said the corridor linking Aligarh, Agra, Jhansi, Chitrakoot, Kanpur and Lucknow will include largely the reactivation of the existing tier one units and linking them with new units in the MSME sector.
India continued to top the charts as the world’s largest defence importer, a report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has found, according to a Mint report of February 2017.
Between 2012 and 2016, India accounted for 13% of global arms imports, followed by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, China and Algeria, said the Mint report quoting SIPRI, which tracks global arms purchases.
According to a Hindu Businessline report, India is the largest arms importer in the world and spends $ 3.6 billion annually on an average.
For her part, the minister said at the summit: “Already, UP is the biggest in the sector with six public sector undertakings (PSUs) purely in defence in Kanpur in the form of six ordnance factories and a total of 13 in the entire state. But in the last 25 years, they have been lifeless. They have to be activated and re-energised.”
The 13 units that the minister mentioned included three Hindustan Aeronautics Limited divisions in Kanpur, Lucknow and Korwa (Amethi).
Defence production secretary Ajay Kumar said: “We estimate that the UP corridor will generate production worth Rs 50,000 crore in the next 10 years.” The corridor was expected to get an expected investment of Rs 20,000 crore, the PM had said on Wednesday.
Sitharaman and Kumar were participating in a session on ‘defence aerospace manufacturing’ at the summit.
Sitharaman said teams from the defence ministry will visit Aligarh, Agra, Kanpur, Lucknow, Chitrakoot and Jhansi in the next three months as a precursor to the rollout plan.
To potential investors, she said: “When defence ministry teams, including armed forces officers, tour UP, they will say what India’s defence forces will be procuring for the next 50 years. They will tell you what you can manufacture. Apart from what they ask, if you have some ideas for defence manufacturing, tell us those ideas. We will look into them fast. When the MSMEs will be asked to manufacture something for the defence (forces), we will also provide assurance for buying those (so) that you don’t have to worry about any losses.”
She also said the details of the defence corridor announced by the Prime Minister were worked out in 18 days’ time.
The Central government had earlier announced that it would develop two such corridors. The first of the two, announced by finance minister Arun Jaitley in his budget speech, is being built between Chennai and Bengaluru, connecting Kattupalli port, Chennai, Tiruchi, Coimbatore and Hosur.
Talking about the summit, the defence minister said: “What is happening here is absolutely phenomenal.”
Chief minister Yogi Adityanath, who also spoke at the session, said: “UP is an ideal place and offers potential in the field of defence and aerospace. We invite defence automobile manufacturing, defence components, testing facility and test ranges, drone manufacturing and testing, aerospace parks, fighter jets and helicopter manufacturing and assembly.”
Yogi said UP had an advantage as it was located on Golden Quadrilateral road network, had access to the national capital region (NCR), strategic access to the market and resource depth of the eastern region, a large railway network, and a dry port coming up at Jewar.
Yogi said the land bank in Bundelkhand, especially along the proposed Bundelkhand Expressway, would see the defence production units coming up.