WILL DEFENCE EXPO DELIVER ON DEFENCE EXPORTS?

VIJAY KUMAR SAXENA examines the complex issue of defence exports and the monumental challenges it poses.

- VIJAY KUMAR SAXENA

As the big event of the Def Expo 2022 unfolds from March 10 to 13, 2022 at Gandhinagar, the greenest capital city in entire Asia, it is worth asking: “Are we getting the ‘bang for the buck’?”

Draft Defence Procurement and Export promotion Policy or DPEPP promulgated by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) on August 3 2020 talked big on Defence Expos as a main facilitation vehicle in finding new customers and new areas of pushing up defence exports.

The above policy identified the twin events, namely, the Defence Expo and Aero India, to be positioned as major global events for showcasing India’s expertise and capabilities in the defence manufacturing sector to the potential buyer countries for securing export orders.

Is it happening in the Def Expos/ Aero India events gone by? Are we getting the bang for the buck in converting the huge funds spent on such events into substantial export orders? The answer to this poser in the sense of the author is ‘No’. In diluted words- far less than desired. Some hard facts are as under:

1. DPEPP envisioned an export target of $5 billion (Rs 35000 crore) by the year 2025.

2. The total defence exports for the FY 2019-20 were only Rs 9115.55 crore. This further dropped to Rs 8434.84 crore in the FY 2020-21, mainly due to Covid blues.

3. At this rate of growth, we can at best hope to reach 30-40 percent of the target by 2025.

While the above is the dark part of the story, the bright part is also getting to become visible. Some salient details are enumerated as follows: