Defence shopping to be time-bound

Two weeks ago, Mukherjee told a meeting of his Ministry’s Consultative Committee that he hoped the new procedure would be more streamlined towards requirements of the armed forces. Long periods of time between the communication of requirement and signing of a deal, mostly due to unwieldy bureaucratic requirements, have led to increased costs of equipment and lower bargaining power for the Indian Government.

A case in point being the purchase of 66 Hawk-132 jet trainers — 19 years after the IAF said it needed them.

The Defence Ministry is expecting a hike of 20 per cent in this year’s budgetary allocations, on the rationale that this financial year will be marked by payments for orders already placed on equipment that include the Admiral Gorshkov aircraft carrier, Phalcon AWACS, MiG-29 fighters and expected orders of Scorpene submarines, 126 multirole fighter aircraft, assorted Naval aircraft, 155mm artillery guns and missile systems.

By December last year, the Ministry had managed to spend 73 per cent of the Rs 77,000 crore allotted to it in the Budget 2004-05.

IAF teams to inspect Israeli, French missiles

NEW DELHI: WITH competition down two firms, the IAF will dispatch teams to Israel and France next month to inspect the two air defence missile systems competing for a Rs 1,500-cr contract, sources said. Israeli defence firms Rafael-IAI’s Spyder system and Ango-French MBDA’s Mica have been shortlisted for the final round of trials to equip the New Western Air Command with a comprehensive ground-based rapid action all-weather air defence capability. —ENS