Submarine deal, defence manufacturing hub: Rajnath pitches ‘Make-in-India’ to German counterpart

New Delhi: Pitching itself as a manufacturing hub for military equipment, India Tuesday asked Germany to invest here as Berlin doubles its defence budget due to the Ukraine war after years of peace in Europe.

Sources in the defence and security establishment told ThePrint that Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, in his talks with his visiting German counterpart Boris Pistorius, also underlined the need to avoid transferring any critical defence equipment to Pakistan.

Pistorius, Germany federal minister of defence, is on four-day visit to India.

Sources said that Germany also discussed the Indian Navy’s Project 75 India (P75I) under which six conventional submarines are to be built under strategic partnership.

While South Korea and Spain are also in the race, German shipbuilding company ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS), which has a tie up with state-run Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited (MDL) shipyard, is the front runner. MDL has time until August this year to bid for the project, sources said.

Meanwhile, in a statement it issued after the meeting, the defence ministry said both leaders reviewed the ongoing bilateral defence cooperation activities and explored ways to enhance the collaboration — particularly defence industrial partnership.

Rajnath said in the statement that opportunities had opened up in India’s defence production sector — including the possibilities for German investments in the two Defence Industrial Corridors in Uttar Pradesh & Tamil Nadu — and that the country’s defence industry could participate in the supply chains of the German defence industry and add value to the ecosystem, besides contributing to supply chain resilience.

The defence minister also stressed to his German counterpart that both countries could build a more symbiotic relationship based on shared goals and complementarity of strengths — namely skilled workforce and competitive costs from India and high technologies and investment from Germany.

Sources explained to thePrint that Germany has put a renewed emphasis on defence after the Russia-Ukraine war and needs to manufacture defence systems.

After the Ukraine war started, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had announced in Parliament that Russia’s invasion was a “turning point in the continent’s history”.

“India has told the Germans that they are welcome to set up factories in India and export it back to their own country even if they are not selling to India,” a source said, adding that the situation in Ukraine has led to the supply chain resilience being broken.

A source said that the message was to “look to India for production, come and invest in its defence corridors and move away from unreliable and difficult choices like China”.

India also asked Germany to treat India as a responsible and privileged partner and invited it to set up a Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) hub for RENK Group, a German company whose parts are used in multiple defence systems here.

The Print