Speaking at the United Service Institution on May 4, 2017, the Chief of the Army Staff said that India needs to spend much more on military modernisation to ensure that economic growth continues unhindered.
The government should set up a task force to engage with potential investors and investees and evolve a simplified FDI policy, which has different slabs for different kinds of activities and is free from terms and conditions that are difficult to understand and implement.
The relationship between the cost versus coverage of technology transferred, which likely follows the law of diminishing returns, would make technology acquisition beyond, say 80 per cent, increasingly cost prohibitive, with no matching and assured gains
It is important to restore the functional self-sufficiency of the finance division of a ministry which handles 17-18 per cent of the total central government expenditure so that it could discharge its responsibilities without real or perceived pressures.
The basic challenge for defence economists is to demonstrate that there are other feasible ways of skinning the cat during budget formulation. But the challenge is also inextricably linked with the need for rationalisation of defence expenditure.
There is a strong case for abandoning the present approach of looking at the defence budget through the narrow prism of allocation and utilisation, and instead focus on outcomes.
On 5 February 2017, a version of the Hawk Advanced Jet Trainer (AJT) was unveiled. The aptly-named “Advanced Hawk” is a joint-venture between BAE Systems and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). It has been developed using internal funds on an equal risk basis and offers significant enhancement of the capabilities of the basic Hawk AJT.
The objective of asking these question should be to elicit information that generates a well-informed debate on, and facilitates the result-oriented monitoring of, the MoD’s handling of matters related to the defence budget.
There is a plethora of evidence to show that the problem of establishing a Defence Modernisation Fund does not lie with any ‘rules of business’, but instead with its merit and workability.
Raising Defence Budget to Three Per Cent of GDP
Speaking at the United Service Institution on May 4, 2017, the Chief of the Army Staff said that India needs to spend much more on military modernisation to ensure that economic growth continues unhindered.