Union Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar has confidently stated that defense imports may “come down” in the near future. He has stated that the focus is to bring down the defense imports and they are planning to bring it down to less than 40% by the time the tenure of the NDA Government ends.
At an ex-servicemen convention, Mr. Parrikar stated “When our government came, defense imports were approximately 70 per cent. Now they have come down to below 60 per cent. I can assure that by the time the term of this NDA government ends, the imports will be brought down to below 40 per cent. We don’t want war, but we annually spend nearly Rs. 3,40,000 crores for preparation of war. If war takes place, we need to be fully prepared. Even after spending so much of money and we have to go to war while depending on others, we may land up in short-supply and at critical juncture, we may land up in no-supply.”
He brought to light that after the 1998, Nuclear testing at Pokhran, the Western World had ended up banning some technologies. These technologies were also shunned by USA. Insisting that, critical materials could not always be imported for protecting the nation, he said they needed security weapons as well as energy security to protect the nation. Strategic reserves of fuel are being created in the country for the first time, and this was not thought of about by any other Government, he revealed.
Union Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar who was attending the news conference along with Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, further gave a statement that, “China has created facilities for storage of crude oil for 20 days and the U.S. has 50 to 60 days of storage. India used to have five to six days of storage, mostly stocks in transit. There was absolutely no strategy for a strategic reserve.” Regarding defense procurement it was highlighted that indigenously created, designed and developed equipment will be given preference.
