Alleviating concerns of the industry, the Minister said, the exchange rate variation protection has been made applicable for the Indian private sector at par with public sector undertakings for all categories of capital acquisitions. The preferential treatment given to DPSUs in excise duty/custom duty has been discontinued, as per the revised policy; all Indian industries (public and private) are subject to the same kind of exercise and custom duty levies. This would ensure a level playing field between the private and public sector. Another step that the Government has taken is to remove the custom duty exemption on import of defence equipment to encourage ‘Make in India'.

Chief of the Air Staff Air Chief Marshal B S Dhanoa, while giving keynote address, said, "The modernisation plan of the IAF is being pursued with an aim to give impetus to ‘Make in India' and to beef up the defence manufacturing base. We in IAF are keen to see that ‘Make in India' initiative gets converted to a reality."

Speaking about self-reliance the Air Chief Marshal B S Dhanoa said, a high degree of indigenisation has been achieved in the field of radars and all the radars planned for induction in future are from Indian firms. The IAF is completely self-reliant in the field of software applications and a number of projects are functioning successfully on software developed by Indian firms.

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