Centre sanctions nine projects to Telangana for manufacturing defence equipments

Centre under the Technology Development Fund scheme sanctioned nine projects to Telangana for manufacturing different defence equipment

Hyderabad: The Central government under the Technology Development Fund scheme sanctioned nine projects to Telangana for manufacturing different defence equipment. union Minister of State for Defence Ajay Bhatt in Lok Sabha said 68 projects were sanctioned to 14 States in the country.

While, Karnataka and Maharashtra were sanctioned 14 projects each, nine were sanctioned to Tamil Nadu and five to Uttar Pradesh.

---

Till date, a total of 68 projects at total cost of Rs. 287.40 crore have been sanctioned under TDF Scheme. Of these, DRDO’s share is Rs.250.12 crore and Rs.58.87 crore out of the DRDO’s share have been released, he said.

Responding to a question by Girish Bhalchandra Bapat, he said several policy initiatives and reforms have been taken by the government in the past few years to encourage indigenous design, development and manufacture of defence equipment, there by promoting self-reliance in defence manufacturing in the country. These initiatives, include according priority to procurement of capital items from domestic sources under Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP)-2020.

Simplification of Industrial licensing process with longer validity period; Liberalization of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) policy allowing 74 percent FDI under automatic route; Simplification of Make Procedure also among the several initiatives, he explained.

Establishment of two Defence Industrial Corridors, one each in Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, opening Defence Research & Development (R&D) for industry, startups and academia with 25 percent of defence R&D budget were also part of the initiatives, he added.