New Delhi: Defence minister Rajnath Singh on Monday unveiled a new Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP) that allows the three armed services to make purchases of essential material through their capital budget.
The new policy claims to simplify the procedure by which the three services procure material.
Also, offset guidelines have been revised to give preference to defence companies that offer to manufacture products in India instead of meeting offset obligations through other means, officials said.
The DAP incorporates new chapters on information and communication technologies, post-contract management, acquisition of systems developed by state-owned defence entities like DRDO and Defence Public Sector Undertakings (DPSUs).
The significance of the new DAP is that it reduce delays in procurement of essential items by the three services; they can now acquire them through the capital budget under a simplified procedure.
Rajnath Singh said the DAP also includes provisions to encourage foreign direct investment (FDI) to establish manufacturing hubs both for import substitution and exports while protecting the interests of Indian domestic industry.
"The offset guidelines have also been revised, wherein preference will be given to manufacture of complete defence products over components and various multipliers have been added to give incentivisation in discharge of offsets," the defence minister tweeted.
The policy provides for single-stage accord of AoN (Acceptance of Necessity) in all cases up to Rs 500 crore to cut delays in approval of acquisition proposals.
The DAP also mentioned measures to reform pre-induction testing of defence equipment.
"Scope of trials will be restricted to physical evaluation of core operational parameters. Other parameters may be evaluated based on vendor certification, certification by accredited laboratories, computer simulations of parameters etc," it said.
