The Defence Ministry of India has released a fresh list of 351 sub-systems and components that will be restricted to be imported under a staggered timeline beginning December next year.
This is the third list that has been released in the past 16 months. India aims at becoming a manufacturing hub of military platforms and equipment under the initiative “Atmanirbhar Bharat”. Adding to this, The Defence Ministry has also released another list with 2500 items that have already been “indigenised”.
“A positive indigenisation list of subsystems/assemblies/sub-assemblies/components has been notified by the department of defence production, Ministry of Defence, as part of the efforts to achieve self-reliance in defence manufacturing and minimize imports by defence public sector undertakings,” the ministry said in a statement.
It further said, “351 imported items” are expected to be “indigenised” by the next three years. As per the Ministry, all the items mentioned in the list will be purchased from Indian industries according to the indicated timeline.
As per the notification, the import limitation on the first batch of 172 items will be applicable from December 2022 whereas for another batch similar provisions will be implemented by December 2023. And, Import restrictions on the last batch of 90 items will be applied by December 2024.
Last year in August, Ministry announced ban on the import of 101 weapons and military platforms by 2024 including light combat helicopters, conventional submarines, cruise missiles, sonar systems and transport aircraft. Various similar lists have been released, putting import restrictions. Indian Defence Ministry aims to reduce the dependency on imported military platforms and rather wants to put much emphasis on domestic manufacturing.