Sunday, 13 Oct, 2024
By: Yash Gupte
Raksha Mantri Rajnath Singh and his Tanzanian counterpart Dr Stergomena Lawrence Tax held bilateral talks in New Delhi on Sunday. The meeting covered a wide range of topics relating to bilateral, regional, and industrial defense cooperation.
Raksha Mantri Rajnath Singh and his Tanzanian counterpart Dr Stergomena Lawrence Tax held bilateral talks in New Delhi on Sunday. The meeting covered a wide range of topics relating to bilateral, regional, and industrial defense cooperation. The two Ministers addressed ways to improve collaboration in all areas, with a focus on defense industry cooperation, after reviewing the current military-to-military engagements. The two Ministers concurred on the creation of a Task Force to develop a Five Year Future Road Map for increasing defense cooperation between the two nations and on the early hosting of the following Joint Defense Cooperation meeting in Tanzania.
The India-Africa Defense Dialogue and DefExpo, which is scheduled to take place in Gandhinagar, Gujarat from18-22 October 2022, will also be attended by the Raksha Mantri's Tanzanian counterpart. Before meeting Defense minister Rajnath Singh, Dr Stergomena Lawrence Tax paid a visit to the National War Memorial and paid homage to the brave hearts who laid down their lives for the nation by laying wreath at the monument. Also, she was accorded a Guard of Honor before meeting her Indian counterpart. Also, Dr. Tax will visit Hyderabad during her stay in India, where she would be interacting with Indian Defense Industries. She would also be visiting Ordinance Factory at Medak, Bharat Dynamics Limited and Zen Technologies Limited in Hyderabad.
Concluding the meeting with his Tanzanian counterpart, Rajnath Singh observed that there is immense scope to boost defense and military to military cooperation between both countries. He also said that the cooperation between the two countries will continue to grow taking the bilateral relation to new heights. He also said that India and Tanzania share the same strategic space and India considers Tanzania as a major Western Indian Ocean Player. This comes from India’s defense minister at a time when India is focusing on increasing its arms exports. India is aiming to emerge as a major player in the international defense export by becoming a significant arms exporter in the world. Currently, India is world’s second largest arms importer after Saudi Arabia but the former tends to bring a paradigm shift in this regard by reducing its imports and maximizing the exports. The accompanying chart shows the number of countries to which India has exported defense equipment.
Source: Department of Defense production, Ministry of Defense
India had exported the defense equipment to more than 68 countries in 2019-20 which the highest till date. The year 2020-21 saw a decline in the number of countries where India had imported its defense equipment due to the widespread disruption in global supply chains caused by the covid-19 pandemic. India is maximizing its efforts to export its defense equipment to maximum countries around the world by simplifying the export authorization procedures and by also increasing the involvement of private industries in defense production.
Apart from a gradual increase in the number of countries importing Indian defense equipment, the numbers of India’s defense exporters have also increased. In 2016-17, there were 19 Indian defense equipment exporters. The number hit an all time high of 76 in 2020-21. The rise in number of exporters can be attributed to the effective steps taken by the government in the implementation of the doctrine of Atmanirbharta in the defense sector and by increasing the FDI in defense sector to 76% in 2020. This facilitated more opportunities for the private players in manufacturing defense equipment.
Defense exports are a pillar of the government’s drive to attain self-sufficiency in defense production. One of the important steps taken by the GOI in boosting defense exports is imposition of a phased import ban on 310 different weapons and systems during the last two years. Boosting defense cooperation with countries like Tanzania will definitely help India in maximizing its defense exports and making a remarkable footprint in the Africa.
