New Delhi: To promote ‘Make in India‘ in defence and aerospace, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will interact with top industry leaders at Vigyan Bhawan Annexe, here tomorrow.

India’s Ministry of Defence, under the aegis of Department of Defence Production, will host the ’roundtable’, a statement from the government said.

“It (roundtable) aims to explore ways to attract investment, address the concerns of the industry and promote innovations in defence sector,” the statement posted on the Press Information Bureau website said. Minister of State for Defence Shripad Naik too will address the event,

The Ministry of Defence has taken several steps to ease licensing, promote exports and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the defence sector.

The process of acquiring defence industrial licence has been eased to significantly enhance ‘Ease of Doing Defence Business’. Applications have been received from various companies and 63 of them were disposed off within the time-frame in 2018-19.

To promote defence exports, 668 No Objection Certificates were issued to companies during 2018-19. Steps have been taken to rationalise the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for reducing the time taken for granting permission for exports.

The average time taken has reduced by 100 per cent to 32 days now. Defence exports have recorded a substantial rise to 107.45 billion rupees ($1.5 billion) in 2018-19 from 46.82 billion rupees ($663 million) in 2017-18.

The FDI in defence and aerospace in the last five years was 16.64 billion rupees ($236 million). Before 2014, the figure was 13.21 billion rupees ($187 million).

‘Make in India’ portal for defence production has been revamped and re-launched. A new portal for defence export and imports has been created for end-to-end processing and communication of export license applications and generating and disseminating export market leads.

In addition, the MoD launched a dashboard to keep track of the major components of defence production, including defence exports, defence offsets, defence projects under ‘Make in India’, start-ups in defence sector, investments in defence corridors in Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu and artificial intelligence projects in defence.

The interaction of industry leaders with the defence minister will provide an opportunity to discuss new and innovative proposals in defence production and exports.