Ordnance Factories should be corporatized into a single corporation: Kelkar Committee

Press Information Bureau

Government of India

Ministry of Defence

13-March-2015 13:38 IST

Kelkar Committee had recommended that “Ordnance Factories should be corporatized into a single corporation under leadership of a competitive management. This corporation should be accorded the status of Navratna”.

The following steps have been taken by the Government on research and development initiative for innovation and import substitution in last one year:

• To avoid the delay in processing of R&D projects at Ordnance Factory Board Headquarters (OFBHQ), financial powers have been delegated to all levels.

• Factories have been given target to increase the expenditure on R&D activities to 3% of their turnover by the year 2018-19 in a phased manner.

• Factories are being encouraged to associate themselves with reputed Academic Institutes for Research Assistance.

• Core technologies have been identified for 12 Ordnance Factories to put in more focused efforts to cope up with Technology denial regime.

• Joint working on some of the large projects with Defence Research Development Organization (DRDO) from the inception stage and to render manufacturing assistance, wherever required by DRDO is being encouraged.

This information was given by Minister of State for Defence Rao Inderjit Singh in a written reply to Shri Gaurav Gogoi and others in Lok Sabha today.