India announces record exports of defense products

Exports of Indian defense products in 2021-2022 amounted to a record 140 billion rupees (about $1.7 billion), transmits Mint with reference to the statement of the Minister of Defense of the country Rajnath Singh.

The Indian authorities believe that this result was achieved thanks to the government’s policy, which is aimed at increasing the export of military equipment to friendly foreign countries. Back in 2014, the country supplied defense products for only 9 billion rupees ($110.8 million), now the goal is to increase exports to more than $3 billion by 2025, the minister said.

According to the Ministry of Defense of the Republic, in the period from 2017 to 2021, the export of defense products of India increased by almost six times. Singh also said that the country has become the fifth largest economy with a GDP of $3.5 trillion over the past 8.5 years.

“Prior to 2014, India was one of the Fragile Five,” Morgan Stanley, an investment company, coined the word. Today we have stepped out of this category and joined the Fantastic Five economies of the world,” the minister said, predicting that by 2027 India will become the third largest economy after the US and China.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s policy to develop national production Make in India led to great difficulties in the purchase of foreign weapons. As Bloomberg wrote in September, because of this, by 2026 the Indian armed forces will experience a critical shortage of helicopters, and by 2030 – a shortage of hundreds of fighters.

In December 2021, Russia and India signed a contract for the joint production of 600,000 AK-203 assault rifles, which will be produced at a plant in the Indian city of Korva. Last November, it was reported that India would start producing 700,000 AK-203 Kalashnikov assault rifles, and the contract, under which the country would order a large batch of weapons from Russia, was estimated at $590 million.