Make in India and Atmanirbharta have been the corner-stone of India’s economic policy since 2014: Defence Minister Shri Rajnath Singh
I would like to extend a warm welcome, to Her Excellency Catherine Vautrin and the French delegation. I appreciate your commitment and effort to reach here, despite the inconvenience you faced, due to technical fault in your aircraft. We have just witnessed a milestone in India-France strategic partnership, as Hon’ble Prime Minister Modi and President Macron digitally unveiled the final assembly line of H-125 helicopters.
My congratulations to the teams from Tata Advanced System and Airbus Helicopters for this new initiative, underlining our desire to expand mutually beneficial partnership with friendly countries in the area of high-end manufacturing.
Make in India and Atmanirbharta have been the corner-stone of India’s economic policy since 2014. This was one of the first initiatives, launched by our prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, under which India is committed to achieve self-reliance in critical technologies and manufacturing of high-end products and equipment through mutually beneficial partnerships.
For more than a decade, India has been charting the path of rapid industrial development through large scale infrastructure building, capital infusion in important sectors through a number of schemes like PLI, on the one hand and providing a liberalized regime for facilitating investment on the other. It has also been our focus to support the small and medium industry and strengthen start-up ecosystem in particular. Overall, our focus has been a holistic industrial development which not only caters to our domestic demand but also takes care of other countries.
While I stand here as Defence Minister of India, I would like to highlight some of the important steps we in the Defence Sector have taken to augment the contribution of private sector in defence industrial ecosystem. Historically, Indian defence production was largely public sector oriented due to various reasons like requirement of high capital investment and long gestation period.
As a result, the contribution of private sector in total defence production and export was less than desirable.
However, with a number of reforms like Corporatisation of Ordinance Factories, liberalized investment schemes, establishment of defence industrial corridors and many such steps, today the share of private sector in total defence production stands at almost a quarter of all defence production in the country. Our defence exports have also increased manifold putting India among the top defence exporters of the world.
This growth trajectory has also given a massive boost, to the MSMEs and ancillary sectors as a result of which it has grown to more than 16000 in number.
A large number of foreign companies, currently source many components from Indian MSMEs. We invite companies, to deepen this partnership through meaningful technology transfer and offer advanced solutions to meet the security needs of other countries as well.
Coming to the unveiling of the final assembly line that we are witnessing today, the H-125 program investment is anticipated to exceed Rupees 1000 crore and is likely to create direct and indirect employment opportunities for our skilled and hard working younger generation. Renowned for its exceptional reliability, versatility, and outstanding performance in diverse operating conditions, the H-125 has proven to be one of the most effective and trusted single-engine helicopters globally.
Tata Advance System and Airbus have earlier collaborated in a prestigious project of transport aircraft C-295. That project is a symbol of how Tata’s in particular and India in general can collaborate with international OEM’s to contribute to Make in India vision.
As I conclude, let me once again compliment Tata Advance Systems Limited and Airbus Helicopters, as we enter a new phase in our longstanding partnership with France. Our collaboration with France is limitless, where even sky is not a limit to our mutually beneficial partnership.
India and France have been trusted strategic partners. I would like to extend my profound thanks to Airbus France, and particularly to the French
Defence Minister.
Dhanyavaad.
Thank you.