|
 And
yet, defence acquisition has been notorious the
world over for delays and cost escalation. According
to Transparency International, defence sector
is also highly prone to corrupt practices on account
of the nature of the market and the secrecy which
cloaks defence acquisitions. Several countries,
particularly the United Kingdom, France and US
have undertaken reforms in their defence acquisition
policies and systems. Major reforms have been
brought about in India too and the Ministry of
Defence has set up a Defence Acquisition Organisation
in 2001.
The Defence Procurement Procedures have laid
down guidelines and rules for capital acquisition.
These have been revised from time to time in the
light of practical experience and the latest version
of India’s defence procurement procedure has been
put in place since January 2011. Yet, we believe
that reform should be a continuing process and
there is need to address the problems that continue
to persist.
The conference has been organized in this background,
with the objective of sharing experiences and
learning from the best practices of different
countries.
In IDSA, we have been regularly undertaking
studies on defence acquisition and procedures.
We believe that considerable improvement can be
brought about in formulation of qualitative requirements
QR to make them broad based, so as to promote
competition. For this purpose, greater expertise
is needed. It has been reported in one of the
papers being presented in this conference that
in 50 per cent cases, qualitative requirements
had to be either waived or amended, which led
to delays upto six months. A case of Air Defence
Gun, has been cited the QRs of which had to be
revised 7 times and it took 17 years to do so.
There is also a need to avoid long delays and
subjectivity in field trials. Another problem
reported in these papers is the multiple stages
of processing, defusing accountability.
According to C&AG, each case has to go through
50 to 60 submission points and 25 per cent workflow
is redundant.
Defence plans need to focus much more on capabilities
required rather than accretion of equipment and
weapons. There is also considerable scope for
greater jointness among the Services in developing
capabilities. Detailed feasibility studies for
larger projects undertaken in time can reduce
risks and ensure greater adherence to costs and
timeframes. One of our recommendations has been
to focus on capacity building of the personnel
engaged in acquisition so that they are better
able to manage the acquisition processes.
These and other critical issues will be discussed
in detail during 9 sessions, over three days,
with the final session devoted to international
best practices in acquisition.
We are indeed greatly encouraged by the enthusiastic
response to this conference. The total number
of policy makers, practitioners, defence officials
and industry representatives’ participating in
the conference is 36. Of these, 21 are representing
foreign countries. It is heartening that experts
from Malaysia, Brazil, South Korea, Russia, Germany,
France, U.S. and the U.K. are participating in
this seminar.
Before I conclude, on behalf of IDSA, I would
like to express my deep gratitude to Hon’ble Raksha
Mantri for lending his support to this conference.
I also wish to thank all the distinguished participants
who have taken the trouble of travelling to Delhi
to share their views in this seminar.
We do hope that the deliberations of this conference
will benefit both policy makers and practitioners
and contribute towards making defence acquisitions
speedier, cost effective and transparent.
|
