New Delhi, July 4 (IANS). Defense Minister Rajnath Singh on Saturday said India’s annual defense production is set to reach an all-time high of Rs 1.78 lakh crore in fiscal year 2025-26, almost three times more than in fiscal year 2014-15. At the same time, defense exports have also increased to more than Rs 38,000 crore, which shows an increase of almost 57 times as compared to Rs 686 crore in the financial year 2013-14. He said that this achievement is a testament to the world’s growing confidence in the ‘Make in India’ platform.
Addressing a media event, Rajnath Singh said that in the last 12 years, India has taken strong steps from scarcity to self-reliance, from self-reliance to confidence and from self-confidence to ‘Developed India’.
He said that in its third term, the government is laying the strong foundation of a developed India through the policy of ‘Reform, Perform and Transform’. He expressed confidence that by the fourth term of the government, the world will see the rise of a ‘developed India’.
The Defense Minister said that when the ‘Make in India’ campaign was launched in 2014, many people had called it a failure. But with time this initiative has set new standards of success and even today it is continuously creating new records.
He said that in the last few years there has been a big change in India’s reputation at the global level. Earlier the world did not pay much attention to what India said, but today India’s opinion on international issues is listened to seriously.
Referring to India Semiconductor Mission, Rajnath Singh said that even at the time of its launch in the year 2021, many people had expressed doubts. But now India produced its first indigenous semiconductor chip last year through semiconductor parks and a ‘plug-and-play’ infrastructure model.
He said that under ‘Make in India’, the country has made significant progress in mobile phone manufacturing, automobile exports, indigenous locomotive manufacturing and digital infrastructure, due to which India is moving forward rapidly in the field of manufacturing and technology.
The Defense Minister also mentioned India’s digital revolution. He said that in April, 22.35 billion transactions were done through Unified Payments Interface (UPI), whose total value was about Rs 29 lakh crore. He said that now the reach of UPI is continuously expanding to other countries also.
He also informed that ‘Make in India’ 5G technology is being rapidly expanded across the country and work on the development of 6G technology is also going on.
Rajnath Singh also mentioned the success of the Goods and Services Tax (GST). He said that initially there were many apprehensions about it, but today it has become a successful model of cooperative federalism by establishing better coordination between the Center and the states.
–IANS
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