New Delhi: Promoting Indian industries in defence sector, the Defence Ministry has given approximately 60 per cent of the total contracts for equipment to them, the Parliament was told on Monday.

In a written reply to Rajya Sabha member Prabhakar Reddy Vemireddy, Minister of State for Defence Ajay Bhatt said that during the last five financial years - 2016-17 to 2020-21 and current financial year 2021-22 up to June 2021, a total of 264 contracts have been signed for capital procurement of defence equipment for the armed forces, and out of these, 159 contracts are with Indian vendors.

The minister also said that it has been decided to earmark an amount of Rs 71,438.36 crore for domestic capital procurement, out of the total allocation of Rs. 1,11,463.21 crore for capital acquisition for the current financial year, with the objective to boost capital procurements from domestic sources, including the private sector.

Bhatt also said that a Defence Investor Cell (DIC) was created in February 2018 in the ministry to provide all necessary information, including addressing queries related to investment opportunities, procedures and regulatory requirements for investment in the sector.

"So far, 1,182 queries have been addressed by DIC," he said.

He said that the government has taken several policy initiatives and brought reforms to promote self-reliance in defence manufacturing. "These policy initiatives are aimed at encouraging indigenous design, development and manufacture of defence equipment in the country, thereby reducing dependency on imports in long run," he said.

The minister also pointed that the DPP-2016 has been revised as the Defence Acquisition Procedure-2020, which is driven by the tenets of defence reforms announced as part of 'Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan'.

In order to promote indigenous design and development of defence equipment 'Buy Indian-IDDM (Indigenously Designed, Developed and Manufactured)' category has been accorded top most priority for procurement of capital equipment, he added.