Minister of State for Defense Ajay Bhatt told Lok Sabha that India has signed 264 equity procurement contracts for military equipment since 2017-2018, including 88 deals with foreign suppliers, accounting for 36% of the total value.
India bought Rs 1.9 lakh crore (around $24 billion) worth of military equipment from countries including the US, Russia, France, Israel and Spain in the past five years. Military equipment included helicopters, aircraft radar, rockets, guns, assault rifles, missiles, and ammunition. Minister of State for Defense Ajay Bhatt told Lok Sabha that India has signed 264 equity procurement contracts for military equipment since 2017-2018, including 88 deals with foreign suppliers, accounting for 36% of the total value.
Purchases from foreign suppliers were Rs 30,677 crore in 2017-18, Rs 38,116 crore in 2018-19, Rs 40,330 crore in 2019-20, Rs 43,916 crore in 2020-21, and Rs 40,840 crore of rupees in 2021-22. The Rs 59 billion deal with France for 36 Rafale fighter jets, which was signed in September 2016, is not listed.
The Defense Acquisition Procedure-2020 features important policy initiatives to enhance indigenous defense capability and reduce import dependency with a focus on ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ and ‘Make in India’. In addition, DAP-2020 gives the highest priority to the ‘Indian Buy’ category of procurement and ‘Global Buy’ is only allowed in exceptional circumstances with the specific approval of the Defense Acquisition Council or the Minister of Defence. He also said that DRDO is working on 55 ‘Mission Mode’ projects at a total approved cost of Rs 73,943 crore. These projects are nuclear defense technologies, air-independent propulsion for submarines, combat suits, torpedoes, combat aircraft, cruise missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, gas turbine engines, assault rifles, warheads, light machine guns, rockets , artillery systems, infantry. The army has combat vehicles, surface-to-air missiles, anti-ship missiles, anti-aircraft weapons, and glide bombs.