One year of corporatisation: Be aggressive in times of competitive bidding, Rajnath tells DPSUs

“Defence manufacturing is an important sector to achieve the goal of self-reliance. The MoD has set a target of achieving a turnover of Rs 1.75 lakh crore in aerospace and defence goods and services by 2025, which includes exports of Rs 35,000 crore. The DPSUs must strive to achieve the goal and take the country to newer heights,” he said while reviewing the working of the seven DPSUs carved out of the OFB, at a meeting organised in New Delhi.

He also addressed the officers and employees of the seven companies virtually.

The OFB used to be a conglomerate of 41 factories, nine training institutes, three regional marketing centres and five regional controllers of safety. Top military leaders had opined that the monopoly situation for OFB had resulted in a lack of innovation, low productivity, high cost of production, lack of flexibility at higher managerial level and that a complete overhaul was required.

Rajnath highlighted the need to increase India’s market share across the globe, describing it as the responsibility of the companies to contribute in the efforts towards achieving the objective.

The MoD said that an amount of Rs 2,953 crore has been released to the seven DPSUs in the form of equity, during the financial years 2021-22 and 2022-23 for modernisation and further amount of Rs 6,270 crore is planned to be released to these companies up to 2026-27 for capital expenditure. In addition, an amount of Rs 3,750 crore has been released to these companies in the form of Emergency Authorisation Fund.

Within a span of six months from October 1 last year to March 31 this year, these new companies had achieved a turnover of more than Rs 8,400 crore. For the Financial year 2022-23 also, the DPSUs have projected cumulative sales targets of around Rs 17,000 crore, which, according to the MoD is significantly higher as compared to previous achievements of the erstwhile OFB.