Indian Army Hires PwC to Examine Privatization of 8 Base Workshops

As part of privatisation policies, Indian Army's Master-General of the Ordnance (MGO) on Wednesday hired PricewaterhouseCoopers Pvt. Ltd. (PwC) to evaluate whether government owned corporate operator (GOCO) model can be implemented at eight army base workshops across the country. The Army said that the move is to drive higher operational efficiencies.

"As part of the process, PwC intends to hold conferences and consultations with industry participants, who may be interested in participating in the process going forward," said an Army source.

The agenda of these interactions would be to "understand from interested industry participants their views on opportunities envisaged and issues and concerns if army base workshops were to be run under the GOCO model".

The MGO unit has identified eight army bases workshops across Indian to ascertain whether these can be operated run under the GOCO model.

In Delhi, the MGO wants to see whether a corporate operator can tackle depot level repairs and overhauling of the T-72 and T-90 tanks, including engines. The unit also wants to know whether the corporate operator can carry out component level repairs of all rotables.

At Madhya Pradesh's Jabalpur, the MGO wants to see whether depot level repairs and overhaul of guns, mortars and small arms can be carried out under GOCO model, and in West Bengal's Kankinara, it seeks to know if depot level repairs and overhaul of Scania and Kraz vehicles including their engines and engineer equipment be put under GOCO.

In Uttar Pradesh's Allahabad, the MGO wants to put depot level repairs and overhaul of Tatra and Scania vehicles including their engines under the GOCO model and in Agra, depot level repairs and overhaul of communication systems, radars, optical systems including various sights, electronic equipment and power equipment like generators.

Also at Meerut, it seeks to know whether the depot level repairs and overhaul of air defence weapons systems, guns, anti-tank guided missiles, heavy recovery vehicles, specialist vehicles and engineer equipment can be placed under this model.

The Army also seeks to place a similar system for depot level repairs and overhaul of infantry combat vehicle BMP II and their variants, armoured recovery vehicles and armoured fighting vehicles' engines at Pune.

At Benguluru, it wants to place manufacture of spares for indigenisation, manufacture of simulators for the field and overhaul of aviation rotables under GOCO.

The Ministry of Defence has proposed privatisation of army base workshops under the GOCO model in January 2018, acting on the recommendations of the committee headed by Lt Gen D.B. Shekatkar (retd).

Under the scheme, the MoD had then stated that government will provide land, infrastructure, plant and machinery, equipment system support, oversight and facilitate the contractor.

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