India on Monday (28 September) granted permission to the armed forces to procure military equipment on lease, according to Defence Ministry's new acquisition procedure

The Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP) 2020, unveiled by Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, replaces the existing Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP).

The procedure will be enforced from 1 October.

The move will allow Indian forces to take on lease and use various military equipment, substituting huge initial capital outlays, according to the Ministry.

The new procedure has five new categories and the policy pertaining to leasing has been included for the first time. On what all can be leased, Director General (Acquisition) Apurva Chandra told IANS, "There is no such list and it would be on a case to case basis."

He also said that leasing is a new category introduced to enable operating of assets without owning thereby, substitute huge initial capital outlays.

He also highlighted that post-contract management will formalise procedures after signing of contract with respect to inspections, levying of liquidity damages, contract amendments etc.

Also, the parameters of buying new defence assets called 'staff qualitative requirements (SQR)', will be made more realistic after seeing what is available globally and domestically.

In the past, the service headquarters have been making SQRs which have not been realistic.

The scope of trials of equipment will be restricted to physical evaluation of core operational parameters, other parameters may be evaluated based on vendor certification, certification by accredited laboratories, computer simulation of parameters.

The first Defence Procurement Procedure was promulgated in 2002 and has since been revised periodically to provide impetus to the growing domestic industry and achieve enhanced self-reliance in defence manufacturing.

With the new Foreign Direct Investment policy announced, DAP 2020 has adequately included provisions to encourage FDI to establish manufacturing hubs both for import substitution and exports while protecting interests of Indian domestic industry.