New Delhi, Feb 12 (Inditop.com) About 650 firms from 23 countries will participate in the 6th edition of a biennial defence exhibition to be held here from Feb 15 with Israel being the largest foreign participant.
The organisers said that the Indian participation has almost doubled at the Land and Naval Defence Systems Exhibition since the last edition but refused to give any figures.
“The participation has gone up substantially especially of Indian industries indicating the growing partnership between defence ministry and private players. The scale of exhibition has grown. We have issued 50,000 business passes so far, against 32,000 in 2008,” Secretary Defence Production R.K. Singh told reporters here.
The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is the largest domestic participant followed by Tata.
“We are looking at building better partnership between India and foreign companies and faster growth of indigenous capabilities. This is a forum to catalyse it,” Singh added.
The other major participants are the US, Russia, Britain, France and Germany. Mongolia is participating for the first time.
Large armament firms are pitching to get a share of the Indian defence market pegged at $31 billion in next 10 years.
Foreign companies like Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, BAE Systems, Finmeccanica to Israeli Aerospace Industries, Russian Rosoboronexport State Corporation, Israeli Aerospace Industries and European Aeronautics Defence and Space Company are participating in the exhibition.
Among the Indian participants are Tata Motors, Larsen and Toubro, Punj Lloyd, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited and Bharat Electronics Limited.
The defence ministry will also be facilitating business-to-business meeting between companies.
The companies are vying with each other for two big projects on the anvil — the Rs.420 billion-worth 126 medium multi role combat aircraft deal for the Indian Air Force and a Rs.300 billion project for new six submarines for the Indian Navy.
Many of the blacklisted firms by the defence ministry will also be participating in the exhibition specifically gun major Singapore Kinetics Technologies.
