Page 23 - ADT JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2020 Digital Magazine | GBP

A GBP PUBLICA TION

INDIA BECKONS

In a first, Lucknow, the capital of India's
Uttar Pradesh state is hosting the
11th edition of DefExpo India- 2020
with the theme: ‘India: The Emerging
Defence Manufacturing Hub’ focus-
ing on ‘Digital Transformation of
Defence’.

Nearly 900 exhibitors, including for-
eign companies, have registered for
DefExpo 2020 and the exhibition
space booked by them is 52 per cent
more than that in the previous edition
of the event in 2018.

"Defence Expo 2020 is a very
important event and it will not be an
exaggeration if I say that this is an
international event… Several inves-
tors will come here to decide where
to invest. Because of this expo, Uttar “Our Government is open to new foreign delegations, Government-
Pradesh will become an important ideas and is determined to use the to-Government (G2G) meetings
destination for defence and aero- energy, entrepreneurship spirit and and signing of Memorandums of
space not just in India but the world,” enterprise of the private industry in Understanding (MoUs), the event
said India's Defence Minister Rajnath the defence sector,” he said. will also enable collaboration
Singh. between foreign Original Equipment
He assured that the Government will Manufacturers (OEMs) and India,
While Singh acknowledged the make all efforts to remove any road- fostering the Government's ‘Make in
increasing participation of the pri- blocks and work together to achieve India’ initiative.
vate industry in defence production, the goal of indigenization and self-re-
he stressed that a lot still needs to be liance in the defence sector. The Government has set a target
done to make India a global defence Facilitating platform for Business- of taking India’s Defence exports to
manufacturing hub. to-Business (B2B) interaction with US$5 billion by 2025 under the ‘Draft

ASIAN DEFENCE TECHNOLOGY January/February 2020 | 23