Defence ministry plans to triple number of contracts ( National

As part of a mega-modernisation overdrive, defence ministry plans to triple the number of defence contracts this year as it seeks to simplify the procurement process in 2025, which has been declared the ‘Year of Reforms.’

New Delhi: As part of a mega-modernisation overdrive, defence ministry plans to triple the number of defence contracts this year as it seeks to simplify the procurement process in 2025, which has been declared the ‘Year of Reforms.’ “It is with that kind of a reform in mind that I am saying that in the current year, we will probably hit two and a half to three times the highest level of contract awards ever that the Ministry of Defence has ever achieved,” defence ministry told the Parliamentary standing committee on defence, whose report was submitted in the Lok Sabha on Monday Match 17 , 2025 .

The defence ministry was responding to the query as to why the expenditure on modernisation was less than what was allocated for the capital in the defence Budget.

In 2024-25, while `1,72,000 crore was allocated for capital, the actual expenditure by army, navy and air force was just `87,926 crore. Similar, has been the situation since 2020-21 where actual expenditure on modernisation has been less than what has been allocated in the budget

Defence ministry said that for a long time “we have not been awarding contracts quickly enough in our country because the process of procurement has been taking too much time”.

“Our hope is that by the end of this year, we will squeeze our procurement timelines by ironing out the bottlenecks and delays in two or three different areas, particularly in terms of delays in finalization and preparation of the RFPs, which should be ready upfront with us,” said the defence ministry. In field evaluation trials, which sometimes take two to three years, defence ministry said that it can be replaced by some amount of digitisation and simulation.