India's defense expenses to be 2nd highest in Asia-Pacific by 2016

By siliconindia   |   Thursday, 09 September 2010, 22:29 IST
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Bangalore: The defense sector of India is growing by the day and so is it's expenditure to modernize the Armed forces. These expenses are going to make India the second highest military spender in Asia-Pacific by the year 2016 and globally seventh during the same time period, revealed a study by Frost & Sullivan. The defense budget for the fiscal year 2010-11 has gone up over eight percent as compared to previous years. This year's budget touched an amount of 1.47 lakh crore. With government importing a major share of its defense requirements, the amount is set to reach to $100 billion. The report of the study further added that domestic private and public industries can do business in the areas of defense offsets and homeland security. They can end up in partnerships or on their own. There are several prospects open in the fields of military aviation, naval systems and land systems. A release from the research firm said that defense offsets are mandatory business spin offs to the local industry, and play a key role in driving the local defense industry base. Defense offsets could be 30 to 50 percent of the value of the purchase; they are a big opportunity for the local industry to partner with the best global companies in terms of technology and be their sources of products and services, said the report. The consulting firm said, "The Ministry of Defense now allows banking of defense offsets, which makes the landscape interesting and also opens avenues for greater Indian private sector industry participation apart from the defense PSUs." Homeland security is a relatively new area and is fast catching up in industrial, manufacturing and infrastructure sectors, along with high growth areas such as airport security, mass transport security, infrastructure protection, seaport security and maritime security.