Atmanirbhar Bharat: Rajnath Singh announces import embargo on 101 defence items | India News – Times of India

NEW DELHI: In an attempt to promote indigenous weapons over expensive foreign ones, defence minister Rajnath Singh on Sunday announced an import embargo on 101 items beyond given timeline to boost indigenisation of defence production under Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative.
In a series of tweets, Rajnath Singh made some major announcements and said that following the embargo on certain defence imports, it is estimated that contracts worth almost Rs 4 lakh crore will be placed upon the domestic industry within the next 6 to 7 years.
Of these, items worth almost Rs 1,30,000 crore each are anticipated for the Army and the Air Force while items worth almost Rs 1,40,000 crore are anticipated by the Navy over the same period. The embargo list includes, wheeled Armoured Fighting Vehicles (AFVs) with indicative import embargo date of December 2021, of which the Army is expected to contract almost 200 at an approximate cost of over Rs 5,000 crore.
The Defence Ministry has also bifurcated the capital procurement budget for 2020-21 between domestic and foreign capital procurement routes. A separate budget head has been created with an outlay of nearly Rs 52,000 crore for domestic capital procurement in the current financial year, Singh said.

Singh said that the ministry of defence took cue from Prime minister Narendra Modi’s clarion call for a self-reliant India and prepared a list of 101 items for which there would be an embargo on the import beyond the timeline indicated against them. This is a big step towards self-reliance in defence, Singh said.

The defence minister said that this embargo will give an opportunity to the Indian defence industry to manufacture the items in the negative list by using their own design and development capabilities.

A ‘Negative Arms List’ under which imports of certain weapon systems and platforms will be banned to promote domestic defence manufacturing, will be notified with year-wise timelines for placing an embargo on import of such items from those dates. The list includes, wheeled Armoured Fighting Vehicles (AFVs) with indicative import embargo date of December 2021.
This list would be updated periodically, without compromising on the operational requirements of the Services, to allow lead-time to domestic industry. The minister said that the list has been prepared by several rounds of consultations with various stakeholders and that all necessary steps would be taken to ensure that timelines for production of equipment as per the Negative Import List are met.

More such equipment for import embargo would be identified progressively by the DMA in consultation with all stakeholders. A due note of this will also be made in the DAP to ensure that no item in the negative list is processed for import in the future.
MoD has also bifurcated the capital procurement budget for 2020-21 between domestic and foreign capital procurement routes. A separate budget head has been created with an outlay of nearly Rs 52,000 crore for domestic capital procurement in the current financial year.