Texmaco Defence to play an important role in facilitating Public Private Partnership to enable Eastern India to create a global manufacturing hub with a focus on export orientation

The Bharat Chamber of Commerce & Industry had organised a three days National Seminar and Exhibition in Kolkata on the theme “DEFENCE PRODUCTION: PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP – FOCUS EASTERN INDIA”, in Partnership with the Department of Defence Production, Ministry of Defence, Government of India in September, 2018. Senior experts from Army, Navy and Airforce as well as the Top Management of the Defence Public & Private Sector Enterprises were invited to suggest ways and means and jointly strategise how to bring back the glorious status of Defence Manufacturing Hub which East India in general and Kolkata in particular enjoyed around 200 years back.

Dr. Ajay Kumar, Secretary, Defence Production, Government of India shared his vision on how Electronics would constitute the core of future Global Defence Production and that the Public Private Partnership with Kolkata will be the EPI Centre. He further mentioned that the 13th Consolidated Defence Five Year Plan from 2017-22 has been pegged at INR 26.84 lakh crores, and the cumulative value of India’s defence market for the next five years is also estimated at INR 1.8 lakh crore, making it an opportune moment for defence PSUs and private industries to participate in defence production. Ex-Air Chief Marshal Arup Rahaand Air Marshal RKS Shera, Air Officer-in-Charge, Indian Air Force felt that there are large number of SMEs in West Bengal. However, their participation in augmenting Indigenous Defence Production is almost nil. The President of the Bharat Chamber of Commerce recommended that the Government of West Bengal should set-up Defence Production Cell under the Commerce & Industry Department and also work on developing cluster for Defence Production.

Mr. Tribhuvan Darbari, Managing Director & CEO, Texmaco Defence Systems Pvt. Ltd. (TDSPL) & Chief Executive, Texmaco Rail & Engineering Ltd. (TREL) highlighted that the Government of India has de-notified 250 items and opened them to private sector which was earlier exclusively reserved for the Ordnance Factory Boards. At least 6000 MSME’s in the country are Manufacturing with around 10,000 products which proved there is huge scope and opportunity for this sector. The opening of the Defence Sector for Private Sector participation particularly MSMEs would be possible by providing a huge thrust to domestic manufacturing.

He further highlighted that Texmaco’s excellence in manufacturing, specifically in areas like Machining, Shaping, Forming, Casting, Fabrication, Surface treatment etc. shall be optimally leveraged by Texmaco Defence Systems Pvt. Ltd., which is a subsidiary of Texmaco. He also highlighted that it was the vision & passion of the Chairman, Adventz Group, Mr. Saroj Poddar, that led to the creation of the TDSPL with a clear Charter to take up the challenge to augment the indigenous production of equipments required by the Armed & Paramilitary Forces along with state-of-the-art technology partnerships in diverse areas of operations, under the ‘Make in India’ programme announced by the Hon’ble Prime Minister of India.